


Unique

by claudiapriscus



Series: Unique [1]
Category: Dexter (TV), Supernatural
Genre: Community: sharp_teeth, Crossover, Gen, Horror, Supernatural Crossover Big Bang Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-21
Updated: 2011-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claudiapriscus/pseuds/claudiapriscus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a crazy week for Miami Metro: Three teenage girls found with their throats torn out. A fourth is missing. And then there's the rash of decapitations. There's no link between any of them save for a common crime scene, and nothing's adding up. It's been a good week for Dexter - a break from the ennui of the routine of his perfect suburban life. Besides, he's a little better at putting two and two together than his colleagues are and the total of this latest spate of weirdness keeps coming up Dean Winchester.</p><p>It's a prize Dexter can hardly resist: a notorious mass murder who has eluded the law time and time again - to say nothing of convincingly faking his death several times. Dexter intends to fix that. It'll stick this time: he'll see to it. There's just one problem, and it's about to bite Dexter in the ass: Nothing is ever simple when it comes to the Winchesters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue (Now)

**Author's Note:**

> Art by Attempt_Unique. The banner is the least of the art- there's a a ton more to be seen at the art masterpost, including an amazing soundtrack (downloadable). The art masterpost is here: http://attempt-unique.livejournal.com/47844.html

 

 **Prologue (Now)**

 

 _Saturday_

Timing is everything: that's how Harry put it, when he was counseling patience and planning. The right place at the wrong time, the wrong place at the right time...that's how so many of those like me get caught. Parking tickets and sloppiness. Harry wouldn't approve of my approach tonight. I admit I'm enjoying the novelty....if not the wait.

There's a man on my table, just waiting for my knife. He's unconscious, prolonging my anticipation, like a present left wrapped on Christmas morning.

  I'm standing just outside his line of sight as he blinks awake. I want to see how he reacts. Will he fight it? Scream? He responds to the restraints first, testing them, but he accepts them almost immediately. This isn't the first time he's waken to restraints. It's only after that he sees what I've carefully placed in his view: a gallery of his many victims...the ones I could quickly find photos for, anyway. The latest are given the most prominent position, along with his brother's pretty, blonde, and late girlfriend, Jessica Moore.

Dean doesn't respond to the photos. His eyes search the room, though his view is restricted. I can tell when he catches sight of my tools, and it's not what I expected either.

He laughs. Hard thing to do in his position; the gag is unforgiving. But he persists. It's not the response I'd have pegged him for. He's something different, some new and wonderful thing. Laughter is a common enough reaction to stress, even for those who are decidedly... uncommon. Disgusting and blubbery laughter, panicked giggles, hysterical cackling, I know them all. I see it in the witnesses and surviving victims. It burbles forth from many who have crossed my table. But not like this. I step forward and pull the gag down out of his mouth.

He stares up at me, right into my eyes, and only laughs harder. Just bitter and wheezy laughter. It's... extraordinary. I usually love these moments, just me and my prey. It's about layers and revelations; I reveal the coward or the monster under the murderer under the man. I see them as they truly are, and they see me, as no one else will. Just for that one perfect minute.

It's the only true intimacy. It's lacking tonight. I wonder who he is, underneath it all. The first words out of his mouth aren't enlightening.

"Oh, you got to be kidding me," he says. He tugs at the tape, even though he must know it is pointless.

"Were your victims so amused?" I ask.

His eyes flick up at the pictures I've laid out, and he stops laughing. There are a lot of them. He and his brother have been 'busy, busy bees,' though I doubt it has been in any of the ways Rita could conceive.

Something flashes across his face- regret, maybe. It's gone before I can decipher it. Maybe that was his intent.

"Your pattern. It's so inventive. The fire I get. Even the brand on your arm- it fits.” I lightly wag my knife at him, emphasizing my point.  “Except it doesn't. You're so mutable in the killing, so ritual in the clean up. That's almost...unique." I twist the word in my mouth, tasting it. He is unique. I'm impressed, despite the sloppiness. I regret not being able to take my time with this, to arrange it to perfection and give him the send off he deserves.

"What the fuck do you care?" The laughter has dropped out of his face, but he's still not showing fear- still playing coy.

"Professional courtesy," I say. How apt. I never appreciated it, in the office.

"Well, as much as I'd love to swap tips with you? We're not in the same line of work."

Why does he still bother with the bravado? There's nothing to be won here. Not for him. I pick up my bone saw and examine it in the light. It’s sharp and clean and ready. Dean watches me, still defiant.

"I think we are. We both kill monsters-" I see his face tighten at that – "Sometimes." I bite off the word, and follow his gaze back to the photos. He's looking at the photo of the pretty blonde woman he stabbed in the bank.

“She never hurt anyone,”  I say. I see something at last. Frustration and resignation. Not exactly what I'd expected, but nothing to make me doubt, either.

"Man, just kill me already."

"No denials, Dean?"

"You're not going to let me walk out of here, even if I could prove anything to you."

It's true enough, but I’m still curious. He has no illusions about this. He’s not going to plead or beg or fool himself into thinking that he could stay my hand. But something compels me to answer him, explain myself. I step forward and run my knife up right against his cheek. He doesn't flinch. Everyone flinches as the blade presses near their eye. It's a reflex, not something you can control. Usually.

Interesting.

I lean down until his face is only inches from mine. I whisper into his ear, like it's a secret just for the two of us. And it is.

"I saw you.”

He stares back at me, his mouth in a hard line. His eyes bore into mine, and there’s something dark and defiant there- a challenge, but not one directed at me.  “You saw shit,” he says. “I bet you think of yourself as one of the things hiding in the dark. You have no idea.”   His tone is conversational and dismissive, as if he's only speaking for my edification, but all the same, I smile. He does see me. I slice down his skin and collect the blood that pools there, preparing the slide before examining it. There's a beauty to the pattern it makes. I turn back to Dean.

“Is that a warning or a threat?” I ask lightly, disappointed he’s said something so predictable.

“Neither. Both,” he says, and his voice is so weary that for a minute I wonder if I imagined the bravado a second ago. “Do us both a favor and just get it over with- I want to get to my brother before he gets to you.” The last he says with forced flippancy. He’s going through the motions, and like a lover faking orgasm. I’m not sure whether to be offended or flattered that he’s making the effort.

"Don't you care?" I ask, genuinely curious.  I am seconds away from ending his life and we both know it. "You'll be dead." I’m stating the obvious. He’s put me off balance, this man. He’s never what I expect him to be.

"Been there, done that," he says. He's faked his death several times, I know. There will be no comeback this time. I'll make sure of it.

“Not like this.”

He laughs. There's something wrong with it, some sharpness that still eludes me. "I'm not afraid of dying," he says at last. It seems true. He makes no reaction as I come closer. He smiles, but there's no humor in it. No hope.

“It'll never end.” It's almost an afterthought. Softly: "I've got angels watching over me."

I gently replace the gag. “Not anymore,” I say. I ready the machete. Soon he'll just be another set of anonymous trash bags at the bottom of the sea.


	2. Prologue (Then)

**Prologue (ii)**

  


  
Tuesday \- (Four Days Earlier)   


  
There's a warehouse. Empty- it's been empty for a while. Long enough to have been colonized by the rats, not long enough to turn into the haunt of vagrants and drug addicts. The cops still come here. The neighbors still care. It's just the kind of place that good middle-class teenagers go when they think they're being wild.

They stick to the marked walkways without thinking about it, unconsciously sticking to safety regulations laid out for factory personnel in years previous. Those with flashlights keep them low, pointed center and down.

They giggle, they whisper, they shush anyone who laughs or speaks too loudly.

And then the find the body.

Their parents seek out the very best therapists. Their teachers make sympathetic noises and excuse them from class. Their peers... well, they're teenagers. And the old Canary factory just became the place to be, the place to say you'd been.

A girl squints into the shadows outside the factory and calls, “Natalie?”

There's no reply. She pulls out her phone and checks the time- 9:35. A little late, maybe- but she didn't think they'd go without her. She glances around again, and seeing no sign of her friends, she frowns.

There's a tap on her shoulder.  She nearly jumps out of her skin as she whirls around. “Jesus Christ,” she says, “Natalie, you scared the hell outta me.”

Her friend flinches at the sacrilege.  The girl rolls her eyes. “Sorry. I mean, _'Oh my gosh, Natalie, you scared the heck out of me._ ' But you know, you can't go sneaking up on people and expect them to watch their language,” she finishes severely. Her heart still feels like it's about to beat its way right out of her chest.

Natalie shrugs. “Sorry, Shan.”

“Where are the others?”

Natalie nods her head towards the building. “They already went in.” She shrugs. “I told 'em I was gonna wait for you.” There's a flicker of surprise across Shannon's face. “They went in? And you stayed out? Really? Why?”

“Yeah? So?”

“It's just not what I expected.”

Natalie shrugs. “Guess they were more into it then they let on.”

“And you? You were like the only person who really wanted to do this.”

Natalie taps a finger on her braces- a nervous gesture. “It's just different, you know. Actually being here. What if someone sees? I mean, what if the cops are still here?” There’s something insincere in her tone, but Shannon brushes it off.

“Well, they're obviously not- and you know Kayla and Gina. They'd run out of there screaming if a rat looked at them sideways. Sheesh, not even that-  if there just were a rat.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“This was your stupid idea, anyway, Natalie. What's your problem?”

Natalie shrugs.

“You're the one that convinced me that was kind of the point. And you wouldn't shut up about seeing where they found the body this morning.” The girl adopts a falsetto: “Oh, Shannon, what if there's blood, like actual blood? We should go see.”

Natalie crosses her arms .”Pardon me for having second thoughts about going into the creepy-as-fuck murder scene.”

Shannon looks at her askance, then says, “That's what I was saying, but no one cared. So I'm here now, you're here now and the others are already inside-”

“Fine. Whatever. Let's go.”

Shannon looks long and hard at her friend. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, why?'

“You just seem...I don't know. Off? You'd tell me if something was up, though. Right?”

Natalie rolls her eyes. “Well, yeah. There's nothing going on. I'm fine.”

Shannon sighs. “Forget it. Let's just get this over with.”

The girls duck under the police tape and shimmy up an old fire escape, ducking through an open window.

It's quiet inside. Even the the noise of street traffic seems to recede within the halls of the old warehouse.

“Which way?”

“I'm- not sure. Down?”

Shannon sighs. “Do you see any stairs?”

“We'll just have to find them.”

“I've got a better idea.” Shannon pulls a cellphone out of her pocket. “I'll just call Gina.”

“Oh, come on. Don’t be a spoilsport,” Natalie says, but Shannon waves her off.

The phone rings, and somewhere out in the darkness, a cheerful little tune answers it. It rings and it rings and it rings, then goes to voicemail.

Shannon stares at the phone in her hand.

“There's no way she would have left it here. She loves that thing. Why won't she answer her phone?”

Natalie shrugs. “Probably trying to scare us. Let’s just go down there. We can scare them instead.”

“That doesn't sound like Gina. I’m going to try Kayla.”

“Let's just go look for them,” Natalie says, but Shannon already pulled up her contact list by the time she does.

“Oh, you really shouldn't have done that,” Natalie says as the phone rings.

Shannon looks up. “What?”

There's a sudden blast of music- Kayla's ringtone- just inches away.

“You have Kayla's phone? Why?” Shannon blinks at her friend, feeling puzzled. There are alarms screaming in the back of her head. She's distantly aware that maybe she should be afraid, but it's so unthinkably absurd she can't do anything more than stare in mute incomprehension.

Natalie shakes her head sadly, ignoring Shannon's questions. “Now I'm going to have to do this the hard way. And I so wanted to avoid bruising the merchandise,” she says.

Shannon backs away, then bumps into an abandoned desk. “Nat, you're scaring me.” Natalie advances, not answering her. She brings her arm up and cracks Shannon hard across the face with back of it. The girl falls to floor, dazed, a trickle of blood oozing down her face.

Natalie glances at her hand, noting the ring she'd forgotten there. “Now look what you made me do,” she said, hitting the girl again. “Oh well. Needs must when the devil drives.”

Shannon tries to crawl away, but her body isn't responding. She's on the very verge of unconsciousness when Natalie picks her up and carries her downstairs. She shouldn't be that strong, Shannon thinks before everything goes fuzzy for a while.

When she awakes, she awakes in chains. She's dangling from her wrists, and everything hurts. She tries lifting her head, but it feels too heavy, and she can't move it up more than a few inches. After a minute, she turns her head slightly to the side. Gina and Kayla dangling from chains of their own next to her, but they look asleep- or drugged.

“Kayla,” Shannon tries to say, but her voice has fled, leaving her nothing but a hoarse whisper. She tries to swallow, but her mouth is dry.

She lets her head fall down again. She's exhausted from just the small task of looking next to her.

“Well, what do we have here?” A man's voice. Shannon is too tired to look.

“Hiya, boys.” Natalie. “I've brought you a present. Several presents, actually.”

“What do you want?” Another man's voice, deeply suspicious. “Your kind don't do anything for free.”

“True. Consider this...a token of my esteem,” says Natalie, her tone breezy and insincere. “Let's just say an opportunity presented itself, but I need a little- oh, let's call it a distraction- for my plan to work. That's you boys.”

“Why should we?” The first man again. “What's in it for us?”

“Oh, that's the best part,” Natalie says. “I hear you boys have got yourselves a hunter problem. Help me, and it goes away.”

“We can handle hunters,” says the second man.

“Oh, sure. But these aren’t any ordinary hunters, are they? How many of your nest have you lost already? Let me help you get a little revenge.”

One of the men walk close enough to fall within Shannon's line of sight. She's not sure which. He lifts her head up, and he grins wickedly. He has too many teeth. Her heart races, and she tries to twist away.

The man grabs her by the hair, then leans in close. His tongue darts out, and he leaves a cold, wet trail of saliva up the side of her face.

She's overcome with horror and revulsion, but some tiny part of her mind is still rational enough to think, _The blood. He's licking up the blood._

The man lets her go and turns away. Her eyes burn with tears.

“Deal,” the man says.

  
**  
End Prologue.**   



	3. Thief

**Act I (i)- Thief**   


  


  
  
  


  


Thursday 

   
 There's something very regular and routine about my work life. There's a pattern to it, even as the circumstances and cases change. The same greetings, the same paperwork, the same bad jokes and gossip. Masuka tells some variation on the same risque joke. Deb always takes the same doughnut. Angel always asks how the weekend went and how the kids are doing. There's always some new case or three that captures the imagination- my imagination, anyway.

It's exactly as I'd have it. It makes it easier to blend in- and easier to spot anything that has upset the status quo. They're like a herd, restless in the face of potential danger. The lion in their midst today was a fed in LaGuerta's office, at least according to the office gossip. Jealous of their territory, their speculations all assumed that he was here about the latest spate of murders.

It’s plausible: It’s not every day you find three bloody, mangled teenagers on the very site of the latest in a series beheadings. It’s just strange enough that it might draw the attention of the FBI, especially since teen number four is still missing. I’ll stay wary. It could always be something else.  
   
Laughter floats out of LaGuerta's office. Not her usual reaction when someone muscles in on a case. I linger with everyone else, waiting to see what happens. The door opens and suddenly everyone shuffles around, trying to look busy. My colleagues fiddle with files and push papers around their desks. It's not very convincing, especially considering that every eye is on the door.  
Out she strolls, followed by a tall man- six feet tall if he's an inch- in a cheap suit. He murmurs something to her and she lets loose another peal of laughter. She's playing with her hair and smiling. He's grinning back with a conman's charm, but his eyes flicker subtly around the room, cool and evaluating. Then it's back to her, and he gives her a knowing smirk. “Do you always turn this many heads?” It's just loud enough for the room to hear.

She glances away, hiding the smile that's turning up at the corner of her mouth. But in looking away, she catches sight of her unexpected audience. Her mouth turns down, and she glares, drawing herself up.

“What the hell are you people doing?” she says, looking around the room. “Get back to work!”

 All around, there's a hurried frenzy to get out of her way before she decides to make life unpleasant for anyone in particular. Those with desks near ground zero bend over their paperwork. She casts glances back at the man, trying to see if he's impressed by her authority.

 The bustle has died down, but the room is still intent on LaGuerta and her mystery fed. Everyone is still listening. Cops are born gossips, and they can sense there's something juicy here.

She turns back to the fed and says something. He nods and makes a few apologetic gestures. She looks up, and her eye catches mine.  
   
 "Morgan! What are you working on?"

I wave a file at her. "Coming to see you, actually. I just finished the work up on the Benalli case."

"Oh?"

I hand her the file. She flips through it perfunctorily. "This is good. Very good. Hmm. Dexter, this is Agent Young. He's interested in the Canary factory murders. Could you fill him in on the forensic details?"

"Sure thing, Lieutenant." I put on a helpful smile.

She nods and goes back to her office. She turns her head as if to look back, but doesn't, shutting the door behind her instead.

I head towards my lab. He follows.

"The Canary factory murders? What's the FBI's interest in this?"

"None," he says, shrugging in an open-arm gesture to emphasize his harmlessness. It'd be more effective if it didn't reveal the lines of his side arm holster. "This is more...personal than professional curiosity."

Interesting...and unlikely.

"Ah, well-" He gazes down at the floor for a second, and I'd call it a sheepish gesture if it didn't seem so calculated. "I had a case awhile back. Closed now, but things didn't add up." He twists his lips into a wry smile. "You could say I'm following a hunch."

It'd be a nice story, if I believed it. He's here for something. He's here for something and he doesn't want to tip anyone off.

I look at him hard, as if I could tear open his skull and peek at the thoughts underneath. It can't be for me. There's nothing... I don't think.

He catches my gaze, if only from the corner of his eye. I see suspicion flicker across his face before he manages to hide it, feigning guilelessness.

I turn to the desk and rifle through the files that have accumulated.

"So what can I do for you, Agent Young?"

"I'm interested on your take on the crime scene. Anything that stood out- anything unusual." He wanders around the room, poking vials and equipment with the end of his pen. It's a transparent attempt to get a rise out of me.

"Every crime scene stands out, Agent. They're all unique." I need to know what he's digging for.  
   
 "Yeah, I'm sure. They're all special snowflakes. But are you telling me that nothing stood out as unusual about three mangled bodies?" Frustration. Good.

"Really not my department, Agent. I do blood forensics. If you want to know about the spatter...?"

"Yes." Curt. Irritated. He's in a hurry.

"Alright." I pull up the photos on my computer. I watch him. No reaction to the gore. That's not unusual. But this is: he gives the photos a cursory glance, as if confirming what he already knows.

I think even Harry would have been surprised. Three bodies hanging in chains, throats torn open...in human mouth-sized bites. No animal did this. Someone did it with their teeth. It'd be very difficult to do. And messy. Though not that many killers are as meticulous as I am.

"The blood spray-" I click forward to the appropriate photo- "Here, and here, is consistent with-"

"Having their throats torn out," he interrupts. His voice is tight.

"Yes. This pattern – here? Is a sign of arterial spray, but-"

"There should be a lot more blood," he finishes.

That's really getting on my nerves. But killing every nuisance in Miami would keep me far too busy, even if it wasn't against the Code. So I paste a smile on my face and tell him he's right.  
He smiles and thanks me, but I catch another suspicious glance. It's fleeting, and hidden just as quickly.

"I'll see my way out," he says, then coughs. "Christo," he murmurs. He's watching my eyes.

"What?"

"Just talking to myself." He turns his smile up, but it looks sarcastic.

There's something not right here.

He turns to leave. “Agent-” I say. He stops. “I've got the report on the first murder, too.”

He looks back at me. “So?”

“Unusual case. First the beheading, then this. I just assumed you wanted to see all of it. The department would be happy to hear any insights you might have to offer- truth be told, this is just a little above our usual pay grade.” I follow the words with a humble, embarrassed smile.

“Nah,” he says, with a forced nonchalance. “I got what I came for. I had a hunch-  and it didn't pan out. Can't help you guys.”  
   
There's no way a fed on any kind of legitimate business would have turned down an opening like that. I hold my hands out and shrug. Smile. “Too bad.”

“Sorry,” he says insincerely. He leaves, and I follow him out enough to see him get into the elevator. He turns and waves to the room.

 Many of the women wave back.

"Fuck me," Deb says, clearly impressed. "Who the fuck was that guy, Dex?"

"The FBI," I say, feeling thoughtful. "Apparently."

Her tone turns dangerous. "He horning in on our goddamn case?"

"He was just curious." Or so he said.

"Oh," she says. Her face softens, then brightens. "Is he gonna be coming back?"

"I doubt it. Look, Deb- I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Hmm." She turns back to whatever she had been doing, a thoughtful expression on her face.

I walk quickly over to the stairs as casually as possible, then jog down them two at a time. I get to the bottom just as the elevator arrives. I lurk around the edges as he steps out. He's talking on a phone.

"-Yes, I got it. Gave me the fuckin' creeps. I just don't get people-"

And then he's passed me. I trail him out to the door, then watch from inside as he gets into an ancient black muscle car. The FBI must be moving up in the world if it has decided to outfit its agents in style.

I head back upstairs and back to the routine. But the routine has been messed with; half a dozen vials containing blood samples are missing. Destroying or removing evidence isn't exactly the FBI's style.

Whatever his interest is, it's not in me.

But I'm getting interested in him.

  
*******   


  
The club is pulsating, whirling frenzy of bodies and lights. It's the smell of spilled drinks and sweat. A techno beat pulses from the speakers scattered around the room.

It's owned by a Russian mobster who is said to take particular pleasure in torturing the loved ones of his enemies to death while they're forced to watch. What they say is true. He's earned my knife. It'll take planning to get to him. He's too wary of assassins and rival gangs for a direct attack. Just what the doctor ordered: a challenge. I've been bored and lacking in inspiration.  
Maybe tonight will bring some relief.

There he is. He's mingling with the crowd tonight. His bodyguards keep anyone from getting too close as he reigns over the crowd.

It's almost by accident that I find the agent-who-isn't. I might call it destiny, if I believed in it. He's standing almost in shadow against a wall. I push through the crowd, trying to get closer. I'll leave the mobster for another day: he's not going anywhere. But this man... there's something about him that I don't understand. He's not what he seems.

It's obvious he's not here for pleasure. Not the kind the rest are, at least. I follow his eyes. He's watching a middle-age man who is dancing with a younger woman. The fake agent's lips are pressed into a thin line as he watches them.

Somehow, I don't think he's a jilted lover.

The older man pulls the young woman off the dance floor, heading for a side door.

After a moment, the fake agent pushes off the wall and stalks after them with the grace of a predator.

He's not dressed for clubbing, still in his fed-suit and tie, but he slips through the crowd without drawing comment. He's good. He should be setting off flurries of panic- places like these have plenty of reasons to fear raids. Not even the mobster notices the fox in his hen-house. It's perfection. How does he do it?

I follow him across the room. In other circumstances, I might be spotted, if he's as good as he seems. But the swirling, gyrating crowd provides excellent cover. He pauses near the door, and glances briefly around. Satisfied that no one is watching, he pulls something from inside his jacket. It gives off a dull shine briefly in the darkness, illuminated only in passing- a knife. He pulls out a vial of something and pours it over the knife, then slips out the door.

At least I know what he wanted the blood samples for, if not why.

I work my way over to the door, and ease it open. It opens to a fenced patio just off the main street. A scattered collection of three-legged tables and broken chairs are the only occupants. My quarry's gone elsewhere. There are a set of stairs leading up to what looks like an empty studio, a leftover from whatever had been here before the club.

I climb up the stairs, sure-footed, each step deliberate. Maybe from above, I'll find him again.  
And so I do. He's charging down the alley, no pretense of stealth now, the knife held at the ready.

The couple are necking at the end of it, themselves deeply in shadow. At his approach, the older man looks up and shoves the girl away from him.

A protective gesture, maybe...if she hadn't fallen motionless to the ground.

The man stands there, immobile. Frozen by the audacity of the attack. Except- in the dim light, he seems to be smiling, waiting. There's something dark and viscous smeared across his face- blood? The fake agent draws nearer, then brings up his knife and stabs the man right beneath the ribcage, the blade angled up. No threats, to hesitation. He'd planned this. The man slumps to the ground.

Usually death isn't so quick.

I've missed something.

The fake agent moves over to the girl. He kneels down next to her, leans over her body, but he doesn't find what he's looking for. He stands and turns away in one motion, briefly resting his knuckles against his forehead.

If he were a vigilante, he'd be more brutal. Contrary to what the movies say, most vigilantes are acting on angry impulse. There's no hunt, no careful stalking. If he were a cop- or a bounty hunter or a PI- he would have stopped the man while he was still inside, before he had a chance to hurt the girl. No, he wanted to kill him.

The fake agent walks back over to the man and begins sawing his head off. There's blood everywhere, coating everything, misting in the air, painting the wall. He's covered in it. He doesn't seem to care-

I can't look away. My hands ache from the grip I have on the railing.

He wipes bloody hands on the man's clothes and then pulls a cellphone out of his jacket. "Sam. I got one. Yeah, tailed him. Club down on Broward. Not yet. Because the shit's in the car. I'll call Cas. No, stay there, jackass. You're supposed to be resting...no, screw that. If you’re feeling well enough to get cabin fever, you can clean out the duffel bag you were using as a barf-bucket. I want the hell out of this suit. Yeah, yeah.  Next time, do me a favor and avoid the ceviche."  The fake agent hangs up  abruptly and calls someone else. This conversation is even more opaque.  
"Hey- I need some help. I need you to beam me over some lighter fluid or something. No- it's- ah, never mind. Just get here, and bring me something liquid and flammable. A nightclub- Spice, I think. In Miami- in Florida."

Seconds later, another man strolls around the corner. But the fake agent merely nods in greeting, not startled at all. Was this who he called? If he were so close, why give such strange directions?

The man himself just looks curiously at the bodies. There's something off about him, but that could just be the fact he's dressed for climes far colder than Miami's, with his suit and his tie and his trench coat.

"Dean."

"Did you bring it?"

Still not looking at him, the man hands him a bottle of something. The fake agent- Dean – takes it and holds in under one arm as he reaches for something in his jacket pocket. It’s a small box, like the kind samples of cereal come in. He cuts the top off with his knife and pours the contents over both bodies. He throws the box down on the dead man, and grabs the bottle the newcomer had given him.  It's a small bottle- I can't quite see its shape or contents. He pours it over each body in turn before stepping back and lighting a packet of matches. He flings the little flame at the bodies. The fumes catch fire before even the bodies do, but soon both are burning merrily.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Dean says, "Sam's back at the Seven Seas."

And then they both are gone, before I even have time to glance up from the flames. This won't go unnoticed for long. I should follow suit.

I head down the stairs and slip out to the main street, keeping my head low. I hurry back to my car.

There's no sign of the two men, but that's a problem for later.

I need some time to think.  
[  
](http://claudiapriscus.livejournal.com/55947.html#cutid1)


	4. Arsonist

**Act I (ii) - Arsonist**

 _Friday_

   
Crime scenes lose their ambiance in the light of day. They become just one more morbid sideshow, not threatening or thrilling or anything interesting. Just another mess to be cleaned up. Of course, my colleagues don't see it that way. They don't already know. For them, it's still a mystery. They haven't yet forced it to give up its secrets.

It's going to be a pain in the ass to write up a report without giving too much away.

"Hey, Morgan! We need you over here!" Angel yells, and I dutifully jog over to one of the bodies. Whatever the third man had brought, it had done the trick. Well-done didn't do it justice. He looked like Rita's last attempt at barbecue.

Barbecue.

I should buy some steaks for this evening.

A pointed question brings my attention back to the body. I take a few pictures and slowly look around the scene, as if seeing it for the first time.

"The fire was discovered just past midnight,” Angel tells me. “Bartender on his break called it in; the fire department arrived, discovered the bodies, and called us. What do you think?"

The burning was just as important to him as the kill. He didn't care about the evidence – he walked out of the alley covered in blood.

"Well?" Detectives can be so impatient.

"Can't say for sure, but it looks like when the head was cut off, this one was still alive." I gesture to the blood on the wall, which mostly survived the inferno.

"Sick fuck. Anything else stand out to you?'

I shake my head. "I'll need to go over some things in my lab before I can say anything with any certainty." I don't want to accidentally let anything slip.

"Alright. Thanks, Dexter." He looks down at the body. “I just really want us to catch this hijo de puta.” He pauses for a second and adds, "You know, I am glad I'm not the medical examiner."

"No kidding," I say.

I take the rest of my photos, then get out of the way. Hanging around here is setting my teeth on edge.

   


* * *

It takes time to process everything from a crime scene. Time for autopsies, time for DNA tests, time to collect fingerprints...time to do forensic reports.

Which is why I've spent the last few hours finding out the answers to questions I don't need to ask, and not finding the answers to the questions I want to ask. I need more to go on. Internet searches based on the little I do know turned up 50,000 useless results. There were several websites that referenced both 'Sam' and 'Dean' and beheading, but they were all related to an obscure and forgettable series of books.  Nothing on ‘Cass’ or 'Cas', but it’s probably a nickname, and it’s one too short to be of any use on Google. There are 191 places in Miami that go by the name "Seven Seas"; one of them I know well- it's the place I first witnessed my brother's work. But personal significance rarely translates into actual significance. I've gotten nowhere.

I close the browser, giving up on that avenue, just as my sister bursts in.

"Dex! You were working the scene out at the nightclub this morning, right?" She doesn't wait for me to respond, just throws open the door and starts speaking, gunfire-fast. My sister loves gossip. Not for spreading rumors- she likes the secret aspect of it. Something she knows that someone else doesn't, if only for a minute.

"You're gonna wanna fuckin' hear this. It's fuckin' nuts. So the bodies- motherfucking crispy critters I heard - they took them to the ME's. And the guy doing the autopsy- he went bugfuck big time. He did something to one of the bodies- it's fucking disintegrating-"

"They were burned pretty badly," I say.

She shakes her head. "Not like this. But that's not even the real goddamn crazy part- He's claiming it's like, a fucking alien mutant or something."

I'm not quite skeptical, but gossip isn't always reliable. "Really?"

"Oh yeah. Like the goddamn motherfuckin' X-Files."

"Which of the butcher shop’s finest was it?"

"Jim Bellocq. Can you believe it?"

"He always seemed so..." I don't actually have the right words. Jim had a morbid sense of humor, an appreciation of artistry in death that few normal people do. But he was otherwise as unimaginative and fundamentally stable as bedrock.

Her eyes gleam. "Yeah. Exactly."

"So what are they going to do?"

"Not much. He's being carted off to the loony bin. The body was fucked, anyway. Identifying it's going to be a bitch. But the other one- guess."

I put on an "I give up" face and shrug at her. "What?"

"It's a woman- and they think her throat was torn out. "

This is getting interesting. "Are they sure?"

"That's what's being said. It's not in any reports yet." She grinned. "We're gonna nail that bastard to the wall."

I have my doubts. The fake agent- Dean - didn't kill the girl. Could the dead man have been the killer at the Canary factory? If so- how could my mystery man have found him before I did?  
"They find any prints?" I ask her.

"A few full prints. Several dozen partials. We're running them now."

"Let me know?"

"You think you're gonna get one of your hunches?"

I shrug. I think my search for any of the mystery fed’s fingerprints here in the office was spectacularly undermined by the fact that the only things I'm sure he touched were also the things touched by fifty other people a day, and that I’m hoping he was more careless in the alley. But that’s not something I’m going to tell her.

"Don't you dare tell anyone but me. You're the best." And then she's gone. She'll be back...with the details I'll need to find my answers. I'm lucky to have her. She sees a brother with insight into the minds of mass murderers as a bonus, rather than disturbing.

My brief Deb-free respite gives me the time to check my report. I'm good at my job, and not just because of my- personal experience. Too good, Harry might have argued. No one would notice if my report is a little better than it should be, unconsciously colored by what I know, because that's the standard I've set. They've come to expect it. But I read through it anyway and add a few vagaries and false interpretations, because the worst thing would be to leave something that could come back to haunt me.

Deb comes back as I'm making the last few tweaks. She's carrying a file, and doesn't seem happy. She tosses it down on my desk, huffs out a sigh, and drags a hand through her hair.  
I raise an eyebrow at her.

"The prints," she says. "I thought we'd finally gotten a fuckin' break."

I pick up the file and begin to flip through the report.

The problem with looking for prints in a place like a nightclub- or the alley next to it - is the sheer number of people who will have passed through. The techs had tried to focus on those areas most likely to have been touched by the victims and the killer - and even then, there had been so many. None of them would be mine; gloves are a wonderful invention. I scanned through the list. The first two pages are from the IAFIS, the national database. There are too many possible matches on the partials for them to be of much use, especially considering how unlikely most of them are, and the full prints are all from local crimes. On the other hand, page three shows promise. It’s the report pulled from Miami-Dade’s local database.  My Russian mobster made the top of the list- though that seemed more to be out of the hope to pin something on him rather than credible evidence he'd been involved. There were a couple of drug dealers, and DUI, and a couple of unknowns. Probably the victims, as none of the others fit the profile. Then there were all the hits on the partials, some of which were almost certainly wrong.  Down at the very bottom of the list, an entry with a line through it catches my attention. It's the name that forces me to take a closer look - Winchester, Dean.

I can see why there's a line through it. He's listed as deceased as of 2008. I feel a tingle run down my spine. He's a match for the fake Fed. Height, weight, DOB fits with his age. I close the file with a snap, and hand it back to my morose sister.

"Sorry," I say. "Nothing."

"Yeah," she says glumly. "That's what everyone's saying."

"Look," I say, as if scrambling for some flimsy consolation, "Let me finish these workups. Maybe- maybe there'll be something you can use." Or that I can use.

She twists her mouth into something approaching a smile, thanking me for making the effort, and shrugs. She's unconvinced, but that's good. The last thing I need is for her to get too interested in my report. "Yeah, sure," she says, and then she leaves.

I shut the blinds, all of them, then bring up for the elusive Dean Winchester's record. He was busted for grave desecration back in the late 90s. He skipped bail, and that was the last Miami-Dade county had heard of him...until the real feds put him on the most wanted list a few years ago.

The photo confirms it: he's the fake Fed. It seems that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated, and not for the first time, either, at least according to the news reports. The first attempt involved a body that was his spitting image...that not only was declared dead at the scene, but was also autopsied and buried. It's unknown how he pulled that off; the few theories given each seem more improbable than the last. I'm impressed, but grudgingly. It would take talent to slip out of the hangman's noose so many times. But he's sloppy. If he's as good as he seems, he could have avoided getting caught in the first place. Maybe he wants to be caught. But if he does, why go to such lengths to ensure they stop looking?

My contempt is far exceeded by my curiosity. He's a contradiction, different from anything I've ever come across. Novelty. Everything I've been craving. It's an invitation, practically hand delivered and wrapped in a bow.

 _To: Dexter,  
Love,  
The World.  
_ **  
*****

  


  
I submit my initial report that afternoon. It's maybe a little faster than it should be, but nothing extraordinary. It won't be noticed. Besides, I promised Rita I would relieve the babysitter, which gives me the perfect reason to head out early. And like all the best camouflage, it's true. I stroll out into the afternoon sun. I smile and nod at the beat cops coming in the building. A detective getting out of his car calls out, "Ditching again, Dexter?"

"Hey, Luis. Gotta get the kids," I say. I shrug and shake my head, and keep on smiling. It's all in the body language. What can you do?

"Kids," repeats the detective. He shakes his head fondly. "They'll take over your life. Christ. My wife calls me the other day, asking if I can pick up our daughter from school. Got a fever, she said. In the middle of a goddamn crime scene. I'm standing in the middle of a fucking gang shoot out. Bodies everywhere. Blood. Flies. All that shit. Worrying about chicken pox."

It's such a strange ritual, this. I know this detective in the same way I know most of the detectives. I see him at crime scenes. I given him reports. I've chatted about baseball on the elevator. I was just another face in the crowd, and that was fine. But now, with the kids- and more, the soon-to-be baby - I've been inducted unknowingly into this fraternity of parents, all dying to share the latest news about their precious darlings. I'm a person to him now. He thinks we're the same. I don't understand it.

"What can you do?" I smile again and look down at my watch. "I really gotta go, Luis," I say, artfully adding a iota of apology to my tone. "The traffic's going to be murder, this time of day."

The detective waves me off. "Yeah, I bet. Take care." I open the car door, and he walks off as I do.

It's too hot in here. I turn up the air conditioning and let it blast until I can almost believe that I'd be able to see my breath.

I pull out of the parking lot, but I don't turn on to the freeway. I head down towards the beach. There's an itch at the back of my mind, and I let it drive me down half a dozen streets before I realize where I'm going.

 The Seven Seas is exactly as I last saw it, its brush with infamy apparently forgotten. Nothing about this place has changed. The working girls at the corner are different, but their painted smiles and calculating eyes are the same as ever. I'm not sure what whim has carried me here. I need to be across town in less than an hour, and this little side trip makes it more likely I'll get stuck in traffic.

I've pulled up to the opposite curb and let my gaze rest on the motel. Why have I come here? It's not nostalgia for my brother.

"Sure about that, Dexter?" Harry questions. His eyes are watchful.

"I don't regret-" I stop. "It had to be that way. He would have gotten caught. He almost got me caught. He wanted me to break the Code." I flex my fingers and grip the steering wheel tight. I don't turn to look at Harry.

"And you weren't tempted? Tempted to go with him, out on the open road- free? No consequences?" His eyes are boring into the side of my head. Test time.

"There are always consequences," I say, and it's the right answer. He nods approvingly. "Like your sister."

"He would have killed Deb," I echo.

"And?" he prompts.

I stare ahead. "I'd... regret her absence," I admit. Then: "She's my sister," which is the socially acceptable answer, at least. Just as Harry taught me.

Harry nods. "Good, son. Good. You remember that."

I look back over at him, but he's gone, as much as he ever is.

I glance back at the motel. But Brian was my brother. It goes unsaid.

Traffic moves, and for one second I have a clear view of the motel's parking lot. Serendipity: Whatever whim brought me here was a good one. That black behemoth is unmistakable. Traffic moves again, hiding it from view. I wish I could linger and get a better sense of my quarry. But as it is, I can't stay here. I'll soon be noticed. When the light changes, I pull the car forward, leaving the motel behind. I don't want to. I want to stay and play, but it's not time. There's work to be done.

Watching the kids should be uneventful. It'll give me time to do some my homework. I glance over at the files I've got on the seat. I have some reading to catch up on.

Traffic is getting tight, but soon the motel is beyond sight, keeping its secrets for another day.  
Whatever Harry says, the instinct that brought me here was a good one.


	5. Vandal

**  
**

  
**Act I (iii)- Vandal**   
****  


  
**  
**   


The kids are always happy to see me, and they should be. I'm good at this.

Cody comes running up. "Dexter!" he yells. I grab him and swing him up and around and he giggles. Astor runs up too, but she hangs back at the last second, remembering that she's supposed to be the cooler, older sister.

"Guess what mom said we could have for dinner?" she says instead.

"Hmm," I muse, "Was it...sushi?"

"Eww," says Cody, still dangling upside down over my shoulder.

"No, gross," Astor says, "Sushi is raw fish," she informs me.

"You learn something every day," I reply.

"We're having pizza," Cody says.

"It's in the freezer," Astor adds. I take that as my cue. I head into the house, Cody still swinging over my shoulder. He laughs. It's such a pure sound, an innocent sound that it sometimes amazes me.

It shouldn't be part of my world- and yet here I am.

I set Cody down once we're inside. Astor enters behind us. I make a face. Into the dragon's lair. "Why don't you guys go get that pizza out?" I tell the kids. "I'll be there in a second."

They leave. I return to my quest.

"Mrs. Grosser?" I call. I find her in the living room. She grumbles something at me and then struggles out of the chair. She's one of Rita's neighbors, an old woman whose face has caved in on itself, like a peach that's rotted and withered in the sun.

I try to imagine Rita looking as disgusting as that and can't.

"You're late," she says, hobbling closer.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Grosser," I say. Being polite to nasty old women is one of those social rules I follow because it's necessary. I'm not sure how or why such a rule came about. The world would be better without them.

She ignores me. "I told her- I told her I could watch them until 5. Five, I said.” Her tone has turned grating, into the sulky, petulant whine of a child. Her eyes are small and hard in the deep caverns of her face. "I'm an old woman," she tells me. "People always try to take advantage of me."

I glance over at the wall clock. It shows five minutes past the hour. I look down into her face, right down into the beetle eyes. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Grosser," I repeat. She sniffs.

"That's not enough. Punctuality is a virtue," she scolds.

"Murder has a tendency to upset schedules."

She glares at me. "It's not a laughing matter. I have things to do."

I wonder if she was ever married, or if the 'Mrs.' is just an affectation. She's definitely the type to have poisoned a husband or two.

I entertain the fantasy for a second before repeating,"I'm sorry, Mrs. Grosser," again. It's the magic phrase. It doesn't exactly vanquish her, but apparent acquiescence is the only way to get her to leave.

She glares again, but doesn't deign to respond. She hobbles out the door, still muttering under her breath. I shut it behind her and back into the living room.

The kids are stationed in front of the TV. Now's my chance. I walk back outside and grab the file on Dean Winchester out of my car. My fingers practically tingle with anticipation. It's like Christmas, secrets waiting to be revealed... I take a seat at the table and open the file with all due care and reverence.

The first thing I see are the photos the St Louis Metropolitan Police Department so helpfully provided. The first is of a woman who had been beaten to death. The second is of Dean Winchester's bloody corpse.

It's going to be interesting reading, though not as interesting as whatever the file the FBI kept on Dean would be.

As inconvenient as it is, I don't have access.  Just a dozen files from police departments across the country from before Winchester hit the big times and ended up on the FBI’s most wanted list. That, and about thirty pages of news articles on the crimes I’m unable to access. Sending out a request on NLETS is not an option. Nor is the NCIC. The last thing I need is the FBI inquiring about the sudden interest in a dead fugitive. It's not paranoia. Dean had been a priority for the FBI, which had fruitlessly tracked him and his brother across the country in a nation-wide manhunt. Wherever they went, death (and certain sharp-eyed federal agents) soon followed. When Dean Winchester supposedly went, he took a police station and several FBI agents- including the lead agent on his case - with him. The dead agents ensure that the case has been flagged half a dozen times and more- anything even tangentially connected to Dean or what happened in Colorado will set off all their little federal bells and whistles.

I'm going to skip the repeat. The FBI are nothing if not tenacious.

Fortunately for me, the elusive Mr. Winchester was extraordinarily well-traveled. The Interstate Identification Index had him flagged for felonies in a dozen different states. And local police departments are always so accommodating when it comes to requests from Miami Metro. There's none of the posturing and dick-measuring of the usual inter-agency requests- the case is closed, after all. There's no fame or glory or credit to claim, and even if there were... there's enough distance involved that the usual territoriality doesn't kick in. They can still play the heroes to the local news, if anything comes of it.

Best of all- most won't remember tomorrow that the information was even requested. Why should they? It's one more file in a sea of paperwork.

Some of our fellow police departments were even kind enough (or lazy enough) to forward complete files, not just the pages pertaining to the cases I'd requested. So many crimes the FBI certainly overlooked- all the lesser misdemeanors. To a less discerning eye, they seem unimportant, even (and especially) the early ones, just the expected proof of the standard profile: minor crimes escalating into major ones.

I guess they can't all be like Special Agent Lundy.

Lucky for me.

I flip past the initial photos down into Dean Winchester's past. The death of his mother in the fire, the suspected child abuse, the nomadic lifestyle. And crime. Vandalism, petty theft, loitering, credit card fraud, criminal mischief, destruction of property, grave desecration, misdemeanor arson. It reads like rap sheet of an ambitious juvenile delinquent. A little more varied and unusual than most- but no drugs, assaults, robberies.  
   
 Just the sort of thing that would get overlooked. There are plenty of kids like that out there, falling through the cracks of the system, lashing out at the world in a myriad of petty ways. Yet even here, my mystery man shines with the subtle signs of the exceptional, as his more recent history makes clear.

Amidst the wild variations of his crimes he returns, again and again, to fire and death. It's almost a message, tattooed on the world in ink of kerosene and grave dust. It's gone unheeded, unrecognized.

But not by me.

It almost makes sense as a way to dispose of a body- it's certainly harder to recover forensic evidence. The corpses, though, are rarely of his own making. Some of them predate his birth by a century, while others seem so chosen at random that there's very little chance his path ever crossed theirs except for when he decided to disturb their eternal slumber. I've heard that everyone needs a hobby. Certainly my own extra-curricular activities are equally...specialized.

I'm surprised the FBI never made the connection. Perhaps they did. But it didn't tie to the crimes most likely to catch the FBI's attention – the robbery, fraud, and murders- just the kind of thing that gets noted and overlooked.

Especially when the suspect fits the standard profile with only a tiny bit of finessing. White male, between the ages of 25 and 50, unstable home life, abusive father, early trauma. Child's play to construct a narrative of lesser crimes escalating into major ones; vandalism, arson, robbery, torture, murder... Child's play, and equally facile.

There's no set pattern of escalation here. There's no pattern at all, at least to the untrained eye.  
Where anyone else would see amateurish and tiresome thrill-seeking, I see art. There's nothing petty here. Most who cross my table are small people, clinging to tawdry justifications for their crimes. Killing in plebeian ways for plebeian reasons- the same uninspired drudgery that carries them through daily life. There's no artistry in that.

This man...he's playful. He's killed, as at least some of the bodies in my little stack of folders attest.  But he's not like me. He's not like anyone. Killing isn't the culmination for him. He shifts around, sometimes as neat and meticulous as I am, and other times messy and spontaneous. Hero and villain in turn. It's sheer artistry, unconstrained creativity. The occult trappings come and go, though some of the more sensationalist reporters based whole slews of articles on them, and at least one hack writer used it as fodder for his novels. They've missed the point. For him, the occult trappings are a theme, not a rule. Almost like a message. It's not always present: He uses it and abandons it with the flair of a master.

I flip through some more pages, fanning them out across the table.

His brother is a piece of the puzzle I can't quite place. Stanford educated, bright future, and a clean record, up until the day his girlfriend- perhaps fiancee- died in a mysterious fire. A fire with striking similarities to the one that claimed his mother, and just shortly after his brother re-entered his life. Pulled from the flames by the same brother- the timing of that too convenient to be anything but contrived- and then he's on the road, not just a witness to his brother's crimes but a participant.  
Though not, it seems, the instigator.  
   
 It'd be easy to jump to conclusions about trauma-induced psychotic breaks, but I doubt that's the case. It doesn't fit, not exactly. What is he- accomplice, victim, mastermind...audience? Dean's performance- maybe it's not for the world. Maybe it's for one person. Maybe that’s why he went to such lengths to pull Sam back into the fold.  
   
 I hear the door click open. I shuffle the papers back into the file and look up. It's Rita, of course. The mysteries of Sam Winchester will have to wait until tomorrow.

"Don't tell me you didn't save me any pizza," she calls, and the kids come running. "Mom," they say, "Mom," trying to outdo each other in a bid for her attention. She listens to them in turn, and smiles at me over their heads, tired and happy, her skin aglow.

She'd do anything for her family.

I wonder if that's the connection I'm missing, the key to the Winchesters.

Maybe it's time to revisit my brother's old stomping grounds.

  
*******   


  
Saturday: The holy grail of all normal people. They spend their lives chasing after it, week after week, counting down to their deaths in units measured in weekends. As if Saturdays are something unique and special, an actual break from the drudgery of their weekday lives. They celebrate the weekends as being the only time they are truly free, only to fill them back up with variations on the same routines...

...like pancakes.

I scoop another spoonful of batter and dump into the frying pan. Bubbles bloom across the surface, a testament to my cooking prowess. I slice the spatula across the surface of the pan, cutting in under the batter just as it firms up. One smooth twist of the wrist and the other side is free to fry in the sizzling butter.

They're always perfect.

“How much longer?” demands Cody, standing on tip-toe and trying to see into the pan.

“Just another minute, buddy,” I say. He's wearing his favorite pajamas again. There's nothing here to mark this weekend out from any other.

Rita turns back from the coffee pot, her cup full. She holds it up under her nose and inhales long and slow. “Go sit at the table, Cody. Don't pester Dexter.” There's something sleepy and satisfied about her tone. He does as she asks and goes back to his plate on the table. He's watching me. I pick up the pan and walk over to the table. I gently slide the pancake out onto a plate and push it over to him.

It's dead-center on the plate, a small bit of perfection soon destroyed as Cody tears into it. Syrup pools in the middle, dripping down his fork as he tears it apart.

His sister looks at him crossways and makes a face.

Rita catches my eye. “Little savage,” she says, a wry smile on her lips. She raises her voice. “You'd think they'd been raised in a barn,” she says, arching her eyebrows in significant fashion.

Cody stops and looks up at her, wide-eyed. A fleck of syrup is smeared across his chin. She walks over and ruffles her hair. “Just try not to get it everywhere, sweetie.” She pats him on the head and moves away, reclaiming her coffee from the counter.

I move the bowl into the sink and begin to fill it with water. Astor gets up from the table and walks over, setting her now-empty plate down on the counter next to me.

“What do you say?” Rita chides.

Astor glances up at her mother, then over at me, caught by this small impropriety. Rita's been on a manners crusade of late, though I'm not sure why. Some sort of maternal urge spurred on by pregnancy hormones, maybe.

“Thank you, Dexter,” Astor said, and the words are awkward in her mouth, as if the formality is something foreign.

“You're welcome,” I say. She glances back at her mother, who smiles and says, “Why don't you go get dressed?”

Astor scampers off. Cody watches her go, his mouth still full, syrup still dribbling down his chin.

I turn back to the dishes. “Just bring your plate when you're done, buddy,” I call back over my shoulder.

“Let me get the dishes, Dexter.” Rita drapes her arms around me from behind, her belly pushing into my back, then adds, “You sure you can't take today off?”

I turn and detach her, then shrug in a reluctant fashion. “Duty calls.”

She shakes her head. “You should learn to play hooky.”

“I'm not sure the department would approve.”

“Probably not.” She smiles and she steals a quick kiss. She tastes like coffee and her lips are sticky with syrup. “You're a good man, Dexter Morgan.”

If only she knew. “Not...that good.”

She smiles wickedly...or at least what passes for wicked for her. “I'm counting on it. I've got....plans,” she whispers.

And so do I. But I doubt they'll coincide.

“I'll probably be late,” I warn her.

“I'll wait up,” she mouths, and smiles broadly. It's as bright as sunshine. There's no darkness in her.

I leave, and the taste of her still lingers on my lips, clashing with the minty remnants of mouthwash.

Saturday: In this I'm no different from anyone else, trading one routine for another.

Looking forward to it, finding comfort in it. That's what routines are for. It's about security. It makes the world seem... predictable. Safe.

I'm not playing it as safe as I should. Not sticking to the routine. It's...liberating.

“You're getting sloppy,” Harry says from the passenger seat, “Don't justify it, son.”

“It's a calculated risk,” I say, not taking my eyes from the road. “They never stay anywhere for very long.”

“Is that really it?” His stare would bore a hole through a wall.

“I'm taking precautions.”

“You're taking short-cuts. You're too eager. Keep your head in the game, Dexter.”

I take the next exit.

“I am,” I say, because he's wrong. I'm not unprepared. At the end of the ramp, I look over, but he's vanished again.

His words still seem to echo. I'm going right to the edge, pushing the boundaries of the Code...it’s dangerous. But then flexibility has also always been my stock in trade.

I turn the car down a wide and empty road. It looks like something out of a movie- the huge and deserted thoroughfare, the fallen signs, the dark traffic lights...and the empty, skeletal towers.

There was time in Miami when suitable spots to safely exercise my own unique talents were in short supply. Abandoned warehouses didn't last long- culled from the herd by sharp-toothed developers and transformed into high rise condos. I managed. I'm very adaptable. It required more planning, more time, and a certain agility when it came to scheduling around the workmen’s schedules. There’s a certain charm in a crime scene that erases itself.

Times have changed. There's a glut of half-finished and wholly abandoned condo complexes in Miami- felled by the financial crisis, like so many other things, including my departmental budget. The buildings molder away like so many corpses, empty and quiet. This whole development would have been extremely public, once upon a time. Not anymore. It'll be a decade before the lawyers figure out how to divvy up the remains. The press has taken to calling them the Ghost Towers. It's an irony I can appreciate, and an opportunity I can't pass up. It's a buyer's market, after all, and that includes buildings with those formerly hard-to-find concrete floors, shuttered windows, and unlit parking garages... in areas so depressed even the gangs have given up.

Location, location, location, as any realtor will tell you. And this one is one of a kind in its perfection- generic perfection, something suitable for last minute necessity. Covered windows and boarded-up doors... No one ever comes here. The building has a recessed loading area, not easily visible from the road. That's where I park. The click of the door latch seems muted in the bright Miami sun. I head towards the unfinished glass entrance around the front. It has been covered with several large pieces of plywood layered on top of the each other, more for show than anything else- meant to keep the weather out more than vagrants or vandals or me. It's easy work for a man with a crowbar. The nails pull free with a crack that makes the boards shake. The first board swings down and hits the ground, and the sound reverberates, a hollow echo from inside the building. I do the same to the other side, leaving a four foot by eight foot gap, like the entrance to a cave- dark and foreboding. A troll's cave.

I duck inside. The interior is gloomy, but enough light leaks in from outside and from less-perfectly cut windows for me to see that this place is exactly what I need. Free of clutter, easy to clean. It's all bare concrete. They all are. There's even a makeshift workman's table in one corner, draped in copies of blueprints, just waiting to be elevated to a higher purpose.  It's the perfect monster's lair. Lucky me.

I head back outside to get the plastic sheeting and the duct tape. I’m on a tight schedule. I get the kill room ready- draped in plastic, table at the center, a few battery powered lights ready and in position. When I leave, I make sure the entrance is once again covered by the board. I can’t have anyone disturbing the space, no nosy nancies poking around. This is going to have to be quick...and clean. There will be no opportunities for fine tuning or correction. It’s an oddly exhilarating feeling. Like a performance without a dress rehearsal, even if it is all for an audience of one.  

Maybe this is why Dean does it. Why he’s so mutable, why he keeps his brother close.

...Accomplice, victim, mastermind, audience. It's a question I need to answer. The newspapers tended to forget Sam when they weren't speaking of the brothers as if they were some singular, two-headed monster. His criminal record is far less telling: No sign of any sealed juvenile records, nothing to indicate that he was active during his time at Stanford. Clean right up until the return of his brother and even then marred only by crimes primarily linked to Dean. In this my esteemed colleagues at the FBI were probably right: Dean's the key. But they've missed out by ignoring Sam's side of the equation. The bond between them is nothing normal. Sam has been an active, willing participant in Dean's crimes, even if he isn't driven by the same needs. That goes beyond the usual limits of fraternal loyalty.

Even if Deb could accept what I am, she'd hardly come along in order to pass me that scalpel or to offer her services when it came to getting rid of those pesky bloodstains. Though for a second I can almost see it: “Dex, are you going to fuckin' kill this guy or what? Stop dicking around, you're supposed to meet Rita at the doctor's in an hour.”

Actually, that's a disturbing idea, even for me.  I try to shake it off as I head on to the freeway. There's also the question of 'Cas', the mystery man. He's...unexpected, considering the Winchesters' records. There's no trace of him in their histories, but then again it's hard to track a man about whom you know nothing. And yet earlier investigations had concluded that the Winchesters were all but incapable of working that way with anyone else, let alone forming the kind of easy familiarity and dependence I saw in the alley. Dean's connection/collaboration with his brother already marked him out as unusual. And then this new partner in crime- Dean's a man full of surprises. Truly unique. He'll be the crown jewel of my collection. If only I can collect him. It's time to drop in on my new friends, and see if that gets me answers.

  


  
*** * ***   


  
**  
**   


The clerk  is a greasy, fat old man who wheezes like the neighbor's bulldog. He doesn't look up as I enter the lobby. He's practically paid not to look, just keeps thumbing through a well-creased skin mag. He passes me the register with nicotine-stained fingers and grunts something about check-out. He and I both know it's merely for show: this isn't the kind of place where the guests stay more than a few hours.

 I quickly scribble down Smith, Michael, then look over the the other entries. It's full of improbable aliases and even more unlikely addresses and plate numbers. The entry above mine reads Dick, Harry. He's not the only comedian on the list. Standing out amidst all the Does and Smiths are half a dozen names along similarly creative names, along with a couple of rock stars and several former presidents.

I set the register down on the counter, then toss a couple of twenties on top of it. You'd be surprised how many pay by credit card. I'm not sure why they bother with the aliases. Maybe it adds a sense of adventure. I'm content to operate without the paper trail. The clerk will pocket the money before I've even left the office.

He grunts and grabs a set of keys off a hook and tosses them to me. I let them fall to the counter. It's a room number starting with a two.

“No,” I say. “Something on the ground floor, if you've got it.” The point of the room is to keep an eye on the Winchesters, after all.

He shrugs, palms the keys, hands me another set, then turns back to his magazine. I head back outside. Squinting against the light, I look down at the keys. Room 18 it is.  I walk along the edge of the parking lot: just a man scouting for his room. And I am. My route takes me by the empty parking spot where  I'd previously seen the Winchesters' car...they are or they were a few rooms down from mine. Some apt quirk of fate has given them room #13. Maybe they requested it, wanting an outward sign of the bad luck they seem to carry with them- both for themselves, and for their victims.

The curtains are closed, but they're torn and faded, and I can see someone move behind them. “FUCK!” shouts the someone in the room. The walls are thin. There's a thud that rattles the wall and sends flakes of pink plaster skittering to the ground. “Couldn't just let Cas do his thing, had to take the goddamn car.” the voice trails off into barely-audible invective before picking up again: “What's the point of the goddamn PHONES?” There's a crash, then, followed by more cursing. It's the sound of someone who just watched something important go scattering off in fifteen directions. It's practically an invitation. There's an opportunity here. I glance back at the parking lot, which still is lacking a certain black behemoth. I lean over and bang on the door, three quick knocks.

The door swings open, revealing the giant otherwise known as Sam Winchester. He looks frustrated, as befits a man who seconds ago was beating up defenseless walls. He fills the door frame, as broad and tall as a football player. I'm glad not to be setting my sights on him...at least not yet. His sheer size gives him an advantage that would take a certain amount of planning to overcome.

It'd be a pain in the ass to drag his body anywhere. That's the beauty of the saw: it makes everyone portable.

He's got a duffel bag thrown over one shoulder. It clinks as he shifts his weight, one hand clinging tight to the door frame. It's not the casual, intimidating gesture he was hoping for. His complexion is wan and waxy, giving away the real reason for his grip on the frame: he doesn't trust his own balance.

“Hey, man,” I say. “So, um. You're not Sherry's usual, uh. What happened to Joe? I had a deal with him.”

His brow creases. “Look, man. I don't know who you're looking for, but you've got the wrong room.”

“No, no,” I shake my head. “#14, that's always Sherry.” I crane my neck, trying to see in the room, “She in there?”

Sam shifts, trying to block my view, but I catch a glimpse of an unmade bed and the signs of hurried packing. The room smells of stale sweat and puke, and one of Dean's opaque comments back in the alley suddenly clicks: Sam really should have listened to him. Cerviche is always a risky proposition in Miami's heat, at least in the kind of places the Winchesters are sure to frequent.

“I don't have time for this,” Sam says. He pushes past me and shuts the door firmly behind him. “Look man, the room you want is next door, so do me a favor and fuck off already.” He lurches away, using the stiff-legged stride of a man barely suppressing the urge to run. His balance is a lot more steady than I expected, given the fact that he's still obviously in the throes of food poisoning. Only the slightest shakiness gives him away.

I watch him go. He rounds the corner away from the motel, out of my sight, and I'm tempted to chase after him. But I've got my sights on bigger game, at least for now...and there's far more to be learned inside. It takes me a few minutes  to get the door open. The locks are cheap and simple, but too many years of drunks and addicts trying to force the wrong keys in the whole has left it battered and stubborn.

No one questions me. It's not even a disguise- there's no implication of propriety, here. People in places like these tend to employ their own particular brand of selective blindness. You could kill a man in the parking lot and dump his body in the swimming pool, and never worry about witnesses coming forward. Certainly my brother didn't. There's a charm in that, though I'm not planning on testing it anytime soon.

The door clicks and I push it open, slip inside, and shut it behind me. The rooms here are even tackier than I remembered. Maybe it's the red walls. Sunlight leaks through the curtains, reflects off the paint, and casts the room into garish shades. I move through the weird pink twilight and experience a sudden twinge of doubt. There's far less here than I had hoped: a few shirts and jeans hanging off the backs of chairs and on towel racks, dripping on the floor- the leftover of some quick and dirty attempt to do laundry in the bathtub. Couple of toothbrushes, a shaving kit. Half a case of beer.

 I move over to the table near the window. It's covered in some of the usual detritus of life on the road: take-out boxes, maps, receipts, and something less usual-  newspaper clippings. I hold one up to the light. Flood Leaves 10,000 Homeless. Someone's scrawled “El Nino?” in the margin. I set it back down, then glance over the rest. Earthquake rattles the West Bank. There's a book and passage reference to it, like those used to refer to the Bible. I don't recognize it: the title is in Greek. The others are equally random: massacres in Mexico, fires in Australia, thousands of dead fish on a Spanish beach.

It seems my new friends are more up-to-date on current events than most, something that tells me... not much. I move some of the clippings aside. There's a laptop underneath, but try as I might, I can't get into it. It's not running an OS I'm familiar with- possibly some exotic form of Linux. Not that it matters. Without a password, there's not much I can do with it here. I shut the lid, and spot something I'd overlooked: a sheet of paper, half buried under the newspaper clippings. It was mostly covered in doodles, something which caused me to skip over it earlier. But I've realized something: it's not connected to the newspaper clippings, but the laptop. Someone sitting at the desk had ripped it out of a notebook to use to quickly jot something down- a quick reminder, not anything they were looking to keep.

 Beneath a sketch of a car and next to a woman with gravity-defying proportions is a string of numbers and a word written in a far heavier hand: sulfur. There's something familiar about the numbers, and it takes me a minute to place them, because they don't belong here. They're case numbers, and they're ones I've filled in on innumerable forms recently- they all relate to the Canary factory murders.

I turn the paper over, but there's nothing else written on it. I set it aside, then look over at the map. Someone had made a half-assed attempt at folding it up before giving up and tossing it to the far end of the table. I pull it open, unsurprised to find that it's of Miami. Someone circled the location of the Canary factory. There is an X over the nightclub and a third spot about two miles north of it. I'm not entirely sure of the significance. If there is a connection there, it's not one Miami Metro has made. But I'm more interested in the last mark- a place circled three or four times in pen. The ghost towers.

My ghost towers, to be precise.

At least it's convenient.


	6. Murderer

**Act I (iv) - Murderer**   
****

They're not in my building, but one across the street. It's not much better, though I am at least fairly sure that it's a coincidence that they're here. There's nothing to tie me to this place- I've known about it, but this morning was the only real time I've spent here. It has to be a coincidence.

The location is too perfect, tailored too well to my needs. It'd appeal to others for the same reasons.  
If half the fun weren't the chase, I might be content to set up shop here more permanently and wait for my prey to come to me.

But no. I shake my head to clear it. I need to focus. I park my car in the loading dock of 'my' tower, then walk quickly across the wide boulevard that separates it from its neighbor.

This building is far more finished than mine, with actual doors and working security lights. Someone's still paying the bills. There's no sign that there's anyone there- no cars parked in front, no open doors. And surely that's the point. But the absence is telling: someone is trying to be discreet.

I don't think it's the Winchesters. Subtlety isn't their style. But someone has been paying to keep the lights on, and the windows remain unbroken despite the fact no rent-a-cops have graced this area with their presence in nearly a year.

I skirt the edge of the building, keeping an eye out for...whatever. A sign that I'm about to be discovered. A clue to what's inside. It's linked to the Canary factory murders, I'd be an idiot not to see the connection, but the how and why still escapes me.  And as fine and fun as all this improvising has been, so many unknowns are setting my teeth on edge.

The back of the building branches out into an above-ground parking garage. It's there I find the Winchesters' black behemoth. Empty, of course. The doors are unlocked, but I'm past the point where such access holds any appeal. If there are any answers waiting for me, they're inside.

I wonder what he's doing here, him and the mysterious ‘Cas’. And Sam- if he’s here. If he’s coming. I might have beaten him here. This is my town, after all. I'll find out soon enough.

I pull on my gloves and head for the elevator.   When I call it, the helpful LED bar informs me of each floor it passes. It starts from the very bottom, B1. Handy to know where its last passengers disembarked. When it arrives, it announces its presence with a loud 'ding!'. It's not what I would call subtle by any means. I've got a better idea. I enter the car, but don't push any buttons. After a minute, the doors slide close and the elevator falls idle. But I don't. I removed the top panel and clamber through the top.  I pull a penlight out of my pocket and turn it on.  Its small light barely penetrates the gloom inside the shaft, but its enough to see that there's an access ladder running right along the inner wall of the elevator shaft.

I hold onto the light with my teeth, and swing myself up and on to the ladder, pleased that whoever built this place didn't cut corners everywhere.  It's a long climb up in the dark to the next floor, and prying the doors open there is the unpleasant task of a few minutes: leaning out, away from the wall in order to get the leverage needed to open the doors, holding my position only by pressing my legs against the edges of the ladder and digging my feet into the rungs.

 The second floor is a sunny place, and I'm forced to blink and wince as my eyes adjust.  It's a maze of white plastic sheeting and bare concrete, but the emergency exit isn't hard to find. It's the only doorway in the hall that isn't missing a door. It clicks open with ease, and I step into the stairway and shut it behind me. The stairs smell strongly of paint, even after all this time. The lights have turned on automatically. It's part of the design. No skimping on safety regulations for a little thing like energy conservation. I take the stairs as quickly and lightly as I am able, moving almost soundlessly down past the first floor landing and into the basement.

I pause by the final door, my hand on the doorknob. Someone shouts on the other side, but I can’t make out the words. The very solid fire door means very little leaks through from the other side, no little cracks for a deeply curious Dexter to peek through. I’m tempted to open the door, but that risks discovery. The automatic lights that made my journey down so easy now make it more likely that I’ll be spotted. I listen for a second more, then ease the door open. I crouch down and peer through the crack.

There’s a light directly above the door. It’ll disguise the light leaking in from the stairwell. I still can’t see anything - my view is blocked by a pallet of cinder blocks.  I push the door open a little more and shuffle out, keeping low, making my way to the makeshift wall.

The shouting has died down, but the voices are at least now distinct. First among them is the man of the hour- Dean Winchester. He doesn’t sound as cocky as he did in my office.

“What did you do to him?” His tone is a model of barely suppressed, impotent rage. “I swear to God-”

“You swear to who?” the second voice is light in a way that carries an edge. Contemptuous. “No, I don’t think so. You take a step closer and I’ll pluck your feathered friend.”

I sidle along the makeshift wall until I reach the stack of boxes at the end of it, then ease my way around. Through the gaps in how the boxes are stacked, I can see the room beyond.

  
Dean’s facing me from across the room, but he only has eyes for the slender woman standing in front of him. He’s ditched his suit, now more resembling the workmen who used to haunt this place.  Two tall men on either side of him have pinned his arms back, but he doesn’t even spare them a glance. He just stares ahead, and there’s so much naked violence in his gaze, I can feel my own darkness rising up to greet it. _Hello. Won’t you come out and play_?

There’s a body at the feet of the woman, and she takes the opportunity to give it a punishing kick. Dean’s face remains stony, but he fails to hide the tell-tale flinch. I can’t see more of the body than a flash of tan- huh. The trench-coat wearing friend. The mysterious Cas. Not dead, or Dean wouldn't have reacted. Drugged, maybe. Behind them both is a blond teenage boy, apparently unconscious. He dangles from chains shoddily installed in the ceiling- the very picture of the victims in the Canary factory.

“Where’s your brother, Dean?” the woman purrs. “We’ve got such a party planned for him.”

“Fuck you.”

One of the goons holding him slams an elbow into his side. Dean coughs and sputters. The goon leans in close, sniffing, nuzzling- but the woman holds up a hand. She steps lightly over the body lying prone on the floor, the circles around Dean and his captors. It gives me a clear view of her face.

“Dean, Dean, Dean. You’re worth a pretty penny, you know,” she chides. She’s nothing more than a teenager, barely older than Astor. She bares her teeth at Dean in a grotesque parody of a smile. She has braces on her teeth, and even from here I can see the alternating day-glo colors of the bands around them. “But the boss? He's not choosy whether you're dead, alive, or in pieces. That part's still up to you.”  She runs her fingers up his chest, then slides one hand against his jaw, lifting his chin with her finger.

There's defiance in his eyes...and fear, too. It's wrong, there's something wrong here. The goons aren't even armed. The girl barely comes up to his chin. His fear doesn't fit. Even outnumbered, I'd lay even odds on him escaping- or even winning out against his captors. Even simply by breaking free and holding the girl hostage.

Maybe it's not the girl. Maybe it's the 'boss'- cult leader? Mafioso? But while I'm sure he's not someone Dean is eager to meet, every instinct in my body is screaming that the girl is dangerous. There's no darkness in her, no hidden side: she is darkness.

I know better than anyone than to judge a book by its cover, but there’s no way the girl could be behind the factory murders- not by herself, which is the assumption Miami Metro has been operating on – a lone madman, preying on the weak. For once, I had no reason to disagree with them. And so what is this? It can't be a gang killing. It's both too messy and not theatrical enough: too much work,  and no clear message. A few of tabloids had been floating ideas about satanic death-cults, but not even their readers take them seriously.

I try to focus back on the conversation. I've lost track of it, sinking too deeply into my own thoughts. The Canary Factory murders have been weird from the beginning. That's undoubtedly what drew the Winchesters in. If this is the world they move in, it explains a lot of the strange omissions and unspoken conclusions in their criminal records. No one wants to be the person responsible for writing anything this crazy into the official record. And yet here it is, a room full of people worthy of my knife, crazy or no. Dean’s the gift that keeps on giving. Boredom’s no longer going to be a problem. Scheduling, maybe.

I’m going to have to renew my Costco membership. There just aren’t that many trash bags in a standard-sized box.

The sound of flesh hitting flesh brings me out of my reverie. The girl pulls her arm back and hits him again, and Dean’s head rocks back with more violence than I would have guessed. She's stronger than her petite frame implies.

“Fuck you,” Dean says, and his teeth flash red. He spits, and stains a little piece of the floor red with his blood. The girl dances out of range. “Is that any way to treat an old friend?” she says. She pulls a knife- no. A straight razor. She sashays closer to Dean, holding it out in front of her like a bizarre peace offering.

He swallows, but his gaze doesn’t leave the end of the blade. She spins it in her hand, and he follows it- transfixed, mesmerized.

“Familiar? It should be. It’s not exactly the same...but needs must,” she says, a wicked grin on her face. The phrase rolls awkwardly off her tongue, sounding strange in her valley-girl tones. She says it like she expects it to mean something, but whatever reaction she was hoping for, she doesn’t get it. She waits a beat, and I’m suddenly reminded of Masuka and his jokes- that expectant pause, right as the punchline lands and falls completely, totally, irrevocably flat.

It breaks whatever hold the knife has on Dean, and he smirks. “Just how long have you been out of the loop? There are angels with a better grasp on the times- and sister, let me tell you, that’s just sad.”

Her face goes white with fury, and for a second- I blink and shake my head. Her eyes almost looked black. She strides up to Dean in quick, long steps and holds the knife flush to his face, so that the blade lies flat along his cheekbone.

“I actually finished my apprenticeship, unlike some,” she says, biting every word. “And- Deano?” She turns the blade just enough to draw blood. “I’ve learned things you can't even imagine.”

“Do your best, bitch. You’re not getting my brother.”

I slide back around the boxes, then sit on the floor with my back against the half-wall. There’s more here than I ever expected. I wanted answers, and here they are, even if they make less sense than the partial picture I’d built in my mind of Dean Winchester, some-time vigilante.

I wonder how the feds could have possibly missed it. The Winchesters aren’t quite the anomaly they first seemed. I’ve been looking at this through the wrong framework: it’s not a matter of lone killers, but an organization. Crime family, maybe. One from which the Winchesters went rogue- when? Where did it start? With their father? I’d assumed the constant relocation during their childhood was due to vagrancy and a desire to avoid child protective services, to say nothing of the long line of fraud charges. But maybe it was more than that.

The oddities of the Winchesters crimes - messages sent. Battles being fought. My mind flies. Rescues and casualties and so many victims. Hero and villain. Dean enjoys the work, but his brother leaves. Something happens- some threat to Sam?- and Dean orchestrates his brother’s return to the family fold. The burn their way across the country. Dean fakes his death, but not for the benefit of the law. At some point they lose their father, but pick up an ally, and end up...here. Lucky me.

My thoughts are interrupted by a loud ‘Ding!’- the elevator. It’s against the other wall, and perpendicular to my hiding place. I edge back around to the boxes as the doors slide open. There’s a shocked pause, then-

BANG.

I look up, through the gap in the boxes. Sam Winchester has finally arrived, and he’s wielding a sawed off shotgun. His face is set, resolved, but he looks pissed. There’s no hint of the shakiness I saw in him earlier. His first shot hit the girl, and she reels back with a scream.

Dean wastes no time, twisting his body while his captors are still distracted, kneeing one in the balls and hitting the other in the face with his elbow. He pulls free from them, and Sam shouts. Dean turns, and Sam tosses him a machete. Dean grabs it out of the air and spins back to face his attackers, who have recovered enough to lunge at him. He slams the blade into one’s neck, half-severing it, before ripping the machete free and doing the same to the goon’s partner.

“He knows you’re here,” I hear the girl says spitefully. “He’s coming.” I turn to see her rise from the floor. Sam fires at her again, then dumps the shells on the ground. He’s not using lead shot- the girl screams again and falls back, but she’s nothing more than inconvenienced. They’re not bean bag rounds. Rock salt, maybe. Crowd control. He reloads with practiced efficiency, then lurches forward, falling to the floor next to the mystery man, urgently fiddling with something, before turning and firing at the girl again. I glance back at Dean, who is in the process of removing both goons’ heads from their shoulders. Once done, he stands up from where he’s been crouching. He’s covered in blood again. There’s a splatter against his face, on his shirt- arterial spray, so perfectly defined I want to photograph it, frame it, put it up on the wall in my lab. His jeans are soaked. The floor is coated. His steps are steady, confident, despite how slippery it must be. He moves to the boy, still unconscious in his chains.

The girl is nowhere to be seen.  
   
“Dean,” says the trench-coat wearing friend. I didn’t see him get up. Whatever antidote Sam dosed him with, it must have been effective. Dean turns away from the boy, his face softening. “Cas. You’re okay.” He sounds surprised.

“Yes.” The man’s voice is a low, hoarse rumble. He's not looking at Dean- he's facing the boy. “It’s too late. They turned him- before. He'll awake soon.”

“It was a trap,” Sam says, coming up behind them. “They knew you were coming.”

“Thanks, I kind of got that when Cas faceplanted about two seconds after we touched down.” Dean scrubs at his face with his hand, ruining the perfection of the blood splattered across his cheeks. “How’d you know?”

“I was taking another look at the police reports. They found sulfur at the Canary factory. It didn’t make it into the initial findings- takes awhile for the forensic guys to do their thing, and no one thought it was important.” Sam sways. It's a subtle thing- and easy to miss- but like a tall tree in strong winds, it's a small thing that heralds collapse.  Dean immediately ducks under one of Sam's arms and holds him up. There's something very casual about the movement. There's no comment, no reaction.

“Dude, you look like shit,” Dean remarks.

“But I've got great timing,” Sam says, his voice strong despite the pallor of his face.

Dean turns towards the elevator, towing his brother behind him. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Live it up. If you puke in the car, you'll regret it. How'd you get here, anyway?”

Sam shrugs. The effect is ruined by the way he's leaning on Dean. “Stole a car, what else. We can't leave it here, though. Your precious leather is safe.”

“Oh, like that's a good idea.” Dean replies.”Driving? You look like you're two seconds from a faceplant of your own.”

"It was a good idea ten minutes ago, when I was saving your ass.”

Dean makes a dismissive noise. “Yeah, well, it's a stupid idea now.  And I've got a better one, anyway.” He looks over at Trench-Coat, who has been examining the teenager with the mild curiosity of a scientist presented with a new specimen.

“Hey Cas- you up to an airlift, yet?”

The man turns his head to look directly at Dean, then looks at the ceiling for a minute, as if calculating something. Or looking for something. After a long, thoughtful silence, he says, “The building is still warded. Outside...yes.”

Whatever that means. I can't make sense of it- it's not code. The shared language of brothers-in-arms, maybe.

“There's an elevator,” Sam says dryly. “It's not a problem.”

Dean raises his eyebrows. “No argument? Man, you really must still feel like shit.”

Sam makes a face. “Dude, the sooner I get to lay down, the happier I'll be.”

“What about the car?”

“I've decided to delegate. It's all yours.”

Dean frowns, but lets it go. “Okay then,” Dean says. He looks over at the mysterious Cas, then at the boy. “Is there- can you do anything for him, Cas?” He says it just a little too fast.

“No,” the man says. He glances down at the floor in regret. “Not any longer.” He glances back at Dean. “You can't save him.” He doesn't speak- he intones.  The man sounds like a doctor, the kind who has given bad news to families one too many times, the kind for whom the delivery of such condolences has become rote at best.

Something like grief passes across Dean's face. “Take Sam,” he orders. “I'll stay and deal-” he gestures vaguely at the room with his free hand, “with this particular clusterfuck.”

“Dean,” Sam says, but he's interrupted. “I don't want to hear it, Sam.” Dean waits until the other man has ducked under Sam's arm before letting go himself.

He seems far more confident of the man's ability to hold Sam up than I would be. If Sam stumbles, there's no way the trench-coat wearing friend will be able to hold him up. Sam's at least half a foot taller and certainly far heavier than he.

But they manage, getting into the elevator without problems. And if “Cas” is struggling, he shows no sign.

“Cas-” Dean says, “Where- What'll it be for him? Up or down?” It's not clear which 'him' he's referring to. The boy? His brother?

“I don't know,” the man admits. “ The change in him is still....new.”

Dean has turned away slightly, and I can't see his face. He says nothing for a few seconds. Then: “Right. Fine.” But his tone is measured. Flat.

The elevator doors close. Dean heads over an abandoned duffle bag in the corner, and roots around in it, coming up with a small vial – another of my purloined blood samples, I suppose- and a long, serrated hunting knife. He coats the knife in the old blood, much diminished by its time away from my lab, and walks over to the boy, staring at him.

I couldn't have asked for a better chance. I slip the syringe out of my pocket and flick off the cap. I rise slowly.

Dean's still watching the boy. I step from behind the boxes and walk up behind him, each foot step perfect and silent.

“I'm sorry,” he says, raising his knife. I mirror his gesture and raise my syringe- I'm almost there.

He whirls at the last minute. I'm not sure what gave me away. But it's too late, I'm too close. I jab the needle into his neck and depress the plunger, and grab at his knife with my other hand.

We struggle briefly over it, but the drug soon kicks in.

I lower him gently to the ground.  It's time for us to spend some quality time together.

The boy- still in chains- stirs, but doesn't wake. That's good: a witness would be...inconvenient.

I lean down and hoist Dean over my shoulder. He is unfortunately as heavy as he looks, and I'm forced to stumble towards the elevator, his weight forcing me to hunch down against it.  I don't want drag marks: it'd be too obvious.

I let him fall once we reach the elevator so that I can stand. I push the button for the lobby, rather than for the garage's ground floor. As the doors close, I spare a last glance for both the teenager and headless corpses.

He won't be there for long. I'm not a sadist- pointless cruelty is so...petty. Human. If the scene isn't discovered in the next day or so, I'll arrange for it. Besides, I'll be back- all that blood. It won't be a quick job, either. And corpses get so messy if they're left for long. I'm considerate of my colleagues...and my own sense of smell.

The door shuts. I look down at Dean.

It's time.

  


*** * *  
End Act I**  



	7. Bail Jumper

**Act II - Bail Jumper**

 The aged air-conditioner kicks on with a groan. The sound rouses Sam, but it takes him a minute to fight his way free of sleep. And when he does, he notices that despite the air conditioner's laboring the room has not gotten noticeably cooler. The room is still sticky-hot in the way that Florida has always excelled. He stares at the ceiling, debating whether or not to risk fighting his way over to the window to shut it down.

After a minute, he turns and pushes himself up so that he is propped up on one arm. The expected wave of nausea fails to hit, so he sits up more fully and rubs a hand over his face.

The room is empty, and dark. Orange light from the parking lot filters through the ragged curtains, providing just enough illumination to cast everything in the room into shadow. It feels late. Sam stretches out an arm and fumbles on the side table for his phone. He grabs it. The screen bursts into life, and Sam winces against the light. He blinks, then peers at it. Midnight.

He gets up off the bed and gingerly stands. He still feels a little weak, and too much sleep has left him cotton-headed. But the nausea has passed, the pain is gone. He feels human again. He stumbles into the bathroom, and sticks his head under the sink, gulping in water and then just letting the water run over his face. He stands back up, turns the faucet off and grabs a towel. He rubs his face dry, then heads back into the bedroom and clicks on the light.

There room is still exactly as it was when Sam had collapsed into the bed, all of two seconds after Cas did his thing. Sam's not surprised that the angel didn't stick around, and Dean's been known to hit the bars for some post-hunt partying, but he'd have come back for a shower first. Being covered in blood and monster guts tends to kill the mood.

Sam picks his phone up from the bed stand and calls Dean. It rings straight to voice-mail. Sam frowns. He paces away from the beds, scrubbing at his forehead with his hand. “Hey man. I just woke up- where are you? Don't tell me you're still on clean-up duty. Call me when you get this.”

Sam hangs up and tosses the phone down on the table. It bounces and slides, coming to rest on the disorganized sprawl of Dean's case research notes. He stares down at the table in frustration. There aren't any answers there- just the notes, the phone, and Dean's doodle of the Impala. Sam's skin feels wrong, too small, itching and crawling and claustrophobic. Forced inactivity, maybe. A belated rush from the rescue- something. There's a million reasons for it. Dean should have been back by now, but shit happens. It's not unusual. Sam spent most of the last few days worshiping at the porcelain  altar- he just needs some fresh air.

He grabs his gun and tucks into the waistband of his jeans before heading outside. He shuts the door quietly behind him, though it's still obviously prime-time for the motel. It's cooler outside, but the air is still damp and heavy. He walks over to the pool and rests his arms against the railing. He stares down at the water. There's a light shining in its normally-murky depths. The night hides its true color, and the light streaming up through the water turns it into something almost beautiful. Sam breathes deep. The air is not any fresher than it was inside, but he didn't really expect it to be. Miami always smells of exhaust and dampness and nearly-rotten fruit and sometimes even the sea. It does nothing to ease the tightness in his chest or the itch under his skin. He grips the railing tightly, then forces his hands to relax.

“Hey, handsome,” says someone behind him, and he’s not quite startled by her arrival. Some part of his brain had registered the footsteps behind him, but he's distracted, off his game, and he’d ignored it. Stupid.

“You looking for some company?”  she continues. Sam turns, taking in the woman standing behind him. He recognizes her as one of the prostitutes he’d seen working the motel over the last few days. She’s tall, and more toned than he’s used to seeing in the women hooking in these kind of motels. She’s got a hell of a scar winding across her nose and one cheek, just visible under all the makeup. The sharp lines of her face, much too angular for beauty, put him in mind of a battle axe. Her gaze has the hard intensity of those who have spent too much time knee-deep in shit everyone else ignores. _Hunters, cops, and whores_ , he thinks. _They all look through the world through the same eyes.._

“Just getting some air,” he says, looking at her sideways. “I’m not in the mood for a party.”

She shrugs and pulls out a cigarette. She lights it and leans back against the railing. “Never said you were, cowboy.” She's tall enough that she can look him in the eye, but at least five inches of that are artificial. “Doesn’t mean you don’t need one.” She gives him an appraising look. “If you were any more wound up you’d hum.”

“What is it, a slow night?” Sam asks. He can’t help his tone, but he regrets it.

She takes a drag off her cigarette, unperturbed by his asshole impression and leans more fully back against the fence, taking the weight of her feet. “You could say that.” Smoke spirals up in the air. “Mostly, I don’t like surprises.” She gives him another appraising look. “I've been watching you. You and your- what, cousin? partner? brother?-”

“Brother,” he confirms.

She shrugs and flicks the edge of her thumbnail across her cheek, as if brushing off an errant eyelash. “Whatever.  This ain't exactly a tourist attraction- not the kind that stays a week and takes in the sights.” She raises her eyebrows significantly. Sam turns back around to look over the pool. She doesn't follow him, just leans back further against the railing.

“So all the girls want to know, 'cuz you don't fit.  I'll tell you what I see: you're not here for a fuck, you're not dealing, but you aren't a little lost lamb either.” She glances significantly down at his back, where his gun rests. “So yeah, I want to know.  One of these things don't belong, cowboy, and it's you.” She takes another drag off her cigarette.

“It's a free country,” he says.

“Yeah, maybe,” she agrees. “And then there's the other thing.” She lets the silence spin out. Smoke from her cigarette drifts past his face. He waits, because obviously she's got something on her mind other than the oddity of staying a week in a place like this, and some part of him is expecting it: this is the other shoe dropping.

 “It used to always be empty,” she says at last. Sam frowns at the non-sequitur. She continues, “The pool, I mean. They only filled it back up after the whole thing with that guy- you know, the Ice Truck Killer,” she pauses, then says, “Fucker.” But there's more sadness than anger in her voice. “I was here then, you know.”

Sam glances back at her. “I'm sorry, I don't-”

She waves a hand. “Doesn't matter, not really.” She stares out into the dark, then seems to remember herself. “I just can't forget.  I remember the cops- and the, you know, like CSI guys.” She taps her cigarette until the ash falls. “So what I really want to know, cowboy, is why they're so interested in you.”

Sam stands up in a rush, turning to face her properly. “What?”

She gives him a disbelieving look. “You didn't know?”

“No- Tell me.” It's a demand, and he's stepped far over the line of personal space. She gives him an ironic look, and conspicuously keeps her posture relaxed. Sam steps back, apologetic. “Please.”

 “One of the- uh,” she shrugs, “the forensic guys.” She sneers. “Fuckin' vultures. You shoulda seen 'em grinning.” At Sam's puzzled expression, she says, “Over the body. Like it was fun.” She shakes her head. “Anyway.” She gestures with her cigarette. “He was talkin' to you, earlier. Broke into your room, too.”

“Who?” Sam frowns, and thinks back. “That guy? He's a cop? He said he was looking for-” he shakes his head, “I don't know. A Shelly or Sherry or Sheila or something- just you know, a john.”

She shrugs again. The gesture sets her long, neon-purple earrings to waving. “None of the girls here go by those names. He went into the room and came out a few minutes later in a rush. Don't know what he was looking for, but I think he found it.”

“Shit. ” Sam scrubbed a hand over his face, and thinks of Dean's visit to the police department. There'd been- something. A man who'd pinged his radar, but Dean had said it was a false alarm. Just another creep. The nagging anticipation and the burn under his skin drains away, leaving nothing but the hollow specter of dread. “Shit.”

The woman stands up. “Yeah, I figured.” She gazes levelly at him. “I don't know what your deal is, and I don't wanna. It's got nothing to do with me.  Everyone's got shit they gotta deal with. All I want to know is- are you bringing it down on me and my girls? Because I've got enough dead friends.”

“What? No.” Sam shakes his head and holds his hands out. “We're not- we'd never-” She cuts him off with a swing of her hand. “Yeah, sure. You can drop the puppy-eyes, cowboy. Fuck, do you think I'd be talking to you if I thought you would? No. But whatever you're involved in, I've got the feeling that it's got away of hitting everyone else but you. And if you bring it down on any of my girls' heads- well.” She gestures expansively with the hand holding the cigarette. “Who's to say. But I'll remember you.” She takes a last puff on the cigarette, then drops it and snuffs it out with the toe of one platform shoe. 

“I've got to go,” Sam says, hardly hearing her. He strides back to the room, and she watches him go. “Yeah, you do that, cowboy.”

Sam unlocks the door and steps into the room. He swings the door shut, but it doesn't latch and he doesn't care. He heads straight to the table and grabs his phone. He checks it for missed calls more out of hope than expectation, then calls Dean again. When it kicks to voice-mail, he's not surprised. “Dean. Dude, call me if you get this.” He hangs up and calls Castiel. He drums his fingers on the table as the phone rings. He's expecting it to kick into voice-mail as well, so he's surprised when he hears, “Sam.”

“Cas!” Sam turns, holding the phone tight against his ear. “Thank God. Wh-”

Castiel cuts him off. “Where are you?”

“Still at the motel, ” Sam starts, but he's interrupted by the flutter of wings. He turns, and though he expected the angel's appearance, his nervous system hadn't quite gotten the message. Even after all this time, he hasn't quite become as inured to it as Dean, especially when it involves someone popping out of nowhere behind him. There's nothing as unsettling than the feeling that someone has just sneaked up behind you...especially when it's true.

Castiel looks at Sam, then around the room. “This is not safe,” he states brusquely, and Sam notes that the angel hasn't lost his touch for stating the blatantly obvious as if it were news. Sam is struck by the angel's tone: it's the usual mix of aggravation and demand, like a man forced to answer stupid questions. Castiel has never gotten a hang of human limitations, Sam thinks, and has overcompensated by presuming he's dealing with idiots.  
And maybe he's not wrong, because if there's some other significance to his statement -other than the obvious, but the insecurity of the motel room is not news to Sam- it's lost on Sam, who is too tired and too fried to try and interpret it.

“Yes, and?” Sam says, “We've got bigger fish to fry. That's why I called-”

Castiel stalks forward, pushing into Sam's personal space and glaring down at him, against all odds. The fact that the angel can manage to glare down at someone who towers over him is just one more thing Sam is willing to chalk up to the universe's perverse sense of humor.

“Lucifer has undoubtedly been made aware of your presence here,” Castiel says, glowering. Somehow his voice has managed to become even gruffer.  “It would be unwise to remain much longer.”  He doesn't add, you idiot, but it's clear enough in the way he said “unwise.”

 And just in case Sam hasn't gotten the message, the angel stops and in an attempt to speak Moron, says, “You need to...” he pauses, “get out of Dodge.”

“Fine, great, whatever,”  Sam says. He's in a foul mood and the angel isn't helping, but they're wasting time. “I'm not arguing.  But we've got a problem, and-”

 The angel cuts him off. “Dean isn't here,” Castiel says, and it isn't a question. The angel has stilled, somehow seeming more focused than he was a minute ago.

Sam shakes his head, and the motion causes a milder version of his earlier nausea come rolling back. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “That's what I was calling you about. He's not answering his phone, and there's something fishy going on. I'm trying to track him down. I was hoping you knew something.”

“No,” the angel says, looking away, “I was...otherwise occupied.” 

Sam lets that go and starts pacing the room. “The cops have been sniffing around, but there's something fishy there,” he says. “I'm not sure it isn't another trap. Dean said someone in the station pinged his radar-” He stops and runs a hand over his face. “We missed something, I know it. And that's the problem. We're operating blind here- more than usual- it's time to regroup and reassess the situation. We're goddamn sitting ducks.”

Castiel frowns again, and Sam mentally debates whether he needs to explain the phrase “sitting ducks”. But if the angel doesn't understand, he chooses to simply ignore it. “Yes,” he says, and his gaze goes slightly unfocused for a second before snapping back to Sam. He reaches out a hand before Sam can react and then-

Then they're back in the parking garage. Sam curses and staggers away, trying to suppress the urge to throw up again. The human brain wasn't meant for such sudden changes in scenery- at least not when it included even minute changes in temperature, pressure, and elevation. The closest thing Sam could compare it to was the stomach-flopping sensation on looped roller coasters during that brief point between flying forward and falling back. It was not something that should be attempted after a hellacious bout of food poisoning.

“Shit. Warn me next time,” he says, leaning back against the Impala for support and breathing deeply through his nose. His stomach settles, and then he looks down at the car and reaches the conclusion his disorientation delayed.

It could just be that clean-up is taking a lot longer than usual. Or that Dean is doing a more thorough job, as the basement isn't exactly flammable and torching a skyscraper would be overkill anyway. But Sam's mind presents him with a list of other possibilities, each more terrible than the last: Dean caught red-handed by the cops. Dean injured or dead- the demon returning or the vampire escaping.

He pushes himself off the car. “Let's go,” he says to Castiel. The angel looks at the building with something akin to distaste, but says nothing and moves towards the elevator. Sam recalls the wards and says, “Ah, shit. I forgot. Sorry.”

Castiel gazes evenly at him. “It's...unpleasant,” he admits gravely, “but not-” he stops and looks away. “I am not what I was. That  limits the effects.”

“Oh.” Sam stabs at the elevator call button, not sure how to answer that. Thankfully, Cas doesn't seem to expect one.  The ride down in the elevator is worse than the last one in one respect: he has no idea what's waiting at the bottom. Before, it was kind of easy- even if he didn't have all the details, he knew what he was getting into. In a fit of black humor, Dean had scrawled “Here There Be Monsters” on the bottom of the floor plans he'd lifted from the Miami-Dade BNC. When Sam had looked over the plans in those few minutes he'd sat in the car before charging into the building, he'd found he was  comfortable with that.

As the elevator car descends, Sam pulls his gun from his waistband and takes the safety off. He holds it low and at the ready. He glances over at Castiel, but the angel is just standing there patiently. He looks about as threatening as basset hound. He doesn't need a weapon, Sam thinks, because he is one. For all his otherworldliness, it had become easy to forget that flesh the angel wore was simply something he used to interact with the world without burning out eyes or blowing up buildings.

Sam closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. The elevator dings. Sam opens his eyes and brings his gun up. The doors open... revealing a room that's exactly as he left it. There's no sign of Dean. The bodies are just as they were, though the blood has congealed and the room has begun to stink. Nothing has been moved: nothing has been touched. The chained up vampire still dangles from the ceiling, his legs still dragging on the floor.

Sam steps out into the basement. The instant he does so, the teenager bolts forward, grunting when the chains cut him short like a dog on a leash.

Startled, Sam wheels back and brings his gun up, but finds Castiel has already beat him to the punch. The short silver sword drops from the voluminous folds of his coat and into his hand. In one smooth movement, Castiel buries the blade in the boy's neck.

Sam catches a glimpse of the vampire's wide, startled eyes before the boy falls forward, dead at last. Cas examines the body dispassionately before turning back to Sam.

“There's no way Dean would have left the car,” Sam says, stupidly. _There's no way he would have left a job this unfinished, either_ , his brain finishes for him.  He turns around in a circle, looking for some sign- anything. There's nothing.

A few smears of blood over by the newly dead vampire could be from a struggle...but that didn't tell him much. The fight with the vampires and demon hadn't been neat, but whatever had taken Dean was.

“Cas-” Sam says. The angel looks up from the wall he was examining. Sam grits his teeth and asks the question he really doesn't want an answer to.  “Could Zach or one of his flunkies been behind this? Found him and grabbed him?”

Castiel's gaze slides back to the wall. “No.”

A wave of relief runs through Sam, followed quickly by dread. If the angels hadn't pulled this off, Sam was out of ideas. There was no way a demon would have been this neat, even if it could get the drop on Dean. “Why? The wards? Couldn't they just...power through them? Michael, Raphael, one of them?”

“These are bindings, not barriers,” Castiel explains. His eyes trace something along the ceiling that Sam can't see. “They don't- block. An archangel could “power through”-” he said, the quotation marks virtually audible, “- a barrier ward, and it would break. Nothing can stand against them. This is a more of a...tangle. The more power directed at it, the tighter it binds.”

“Alright. So no angels.” Sam presses his knuckles into his forehead. “Great. Okay. Let's start with what we know. The demon got away, maybe she came back and got the jump on Dean-  in any case, she's probably our best lead-”

“I must go,” the angel says abruptly, tearing his eyes away from the wall.

“Wait!” Sam shouts, and he's relieved that he's able to get the word out before Castiel can disappear, forgetting in the moment Cas' lecture on the wards. “Why?”

“There are matters I must attend to,” he says, his eyes sliding sideways  and back to the wall.

“Dean is still missing,” Sam says, his voice thick with incredulity.

The angel turns the full force of his gaze back to Sam.  “And there is nothing I can do about that here.”

“Fine, okay, right.” Sam shakes his head. “I need to back to the room. I need my computer. I'll switch motels-” he starts, then dances back when the angel lifts a hand, still forgetting about the wards. “I need the car. I'll text you the location once I get everything settled. Or if I find anything.”

“Lucifer will be coming,” the angel reminds him.

“I know that, I do,” Sam says. “But he's not here yet, and we have some time.”

“Not enough,” Castiel says, turning away and heading back towards the elevator. His coat billows out behind him. Sam stoops down and picks up Dean's abandoned duffel and hurries to catch up with the angel, eager to get away from the stench of blood and death.

He manages to get into the elevator just before the doors close. If Castiel has anything else on his mind, he doesn't say it. Sam hits the button for the parking garage, and the elevator begins its ascent. He watches the numbers tick by.

The angel is gone before the elevator even stops. Sam heads back out to the Impala and sinks into the worn depressions of its familiar leather. He starts the car and turns back towards the motel, though he is careful to take a more circuitous route back, just in case someone- or something- had been watching the car.

 It only takes a few minutes to pack up the stuff they'd left in the motel and haul it back out to the car. The woman  from earlier has moved up to the second floor, where she leans on the railing and follows him with her eyes. The way she watches him reminds him of a panther in a tree- the mix of watchfulness and casual, predatory grace. Her proprietary air only lends strength to the mental image, and Sam is struck by one other point of comparison: she blends in just as well as the big cat in its jungle. _I'll remember you_ , she had said...Sam wonders how often men had heard that and underestimated the power of the threat.

Sam ducks back into the room and spends a few minutes erasing the last few signs that they were ever there. Sam isn't sure how the cops fit into the picture, or if they even do. It's still possible the guy had been looking for a 'date' and just had been unusually persistent. He'd been drunk, or faking it well. Sam is still hoping that was the case. But his father- one of the most paranoid bastards on the planet- had taken care to drill the importance of not taking chances into both his sons' heads, and he'd made sure it had stayed there.

Sam used to resent it. He still does, but for a different reason: his father had been right. Everything FUBAR about this hunt could have been avoided if he and Dean had just been a little more on top of their game and a hell of a lot more suspicious.

Sam finishes wiping down the door handles and tosses the last of the paper towels in the small metal waste basket where they cover scraps of newspaper and several pages of notes from the earlier investigation. He carries it into the bathroom, shuts the door, cracks open the window and drops a match into the basket. The contents flare up and burn out just as quickly. He flushes the ashes and heads back out into the room. He does a last check and then walks back out towards the car, shutting the door behind him. Before he reaches the Impala, he pauses.

The woman is still watching. He thinks for a second, then jogs over to the stairs and lopes up them. She's still there when he gets to the top. He walks over. She crosses her arms and arches one pencil-drawn eyebrow.

“Change your mind, cowboy? You looking for one for the road?” There's no sarcasm in her voice, but there's just enough of a lilt to her words that betrays her. She's trying to keep him off balance.

“Hey,” he says, then stops, trying to find the right words. He settles on, “You were right,” and then lets the words fall into the night. She sharpens her gaze, apparently trying to bore through his skull with her eyes and get a peek inside. He's managed to surprise her, but she hides it well. “There's trouble coming, and it's not careful about where it hits...or who gets in the way. My advice? Get out of town, wait for it to blow over. This is not a place you want to be.”

She barks a laugh and stands up straight. “Honey, are you for real? Do you even hear yourself?”

Sam shrugs. “You gave me the heads up about the cop. I'm just trying to return the favor.”

She jerks a hand sideways in an angry gesture. “Trying? Yeah, huh. That's about right.” Her eyes bore into his, refusing to let him off the hook.

Sam shakes his head. “It's the best I can do- and you'd never believe me, anyway. Look. Just- if anything weird happens? No matter how random or strange or seemingly harmless- that's your cue to get the hell out of Dodge. Trust me, you do not want to be around when the shit hits the fan.”

“And what am I supposed to tell the girls, huh?”

“Whatever works.”

She scowls at him then, and makes no attempt to hide it. He holds out his hands apologetically. “I'm sorry, I am. I'm doing what I can, but I gotta go.”

He turns and goes down the stairs, taking them two at a time and then walks across to the Impala. He opens the door and is about to swing inside when he hears the woman call down to him.

“See you later, cowboy.” Her expression falls somewhere between bemused and accusing. He meets her eyes, then folds himself into the car. The thud of the door echoes across the parking lot. He rolls down his window and turns the key. The car rumbles into life, and Sam pulls out of the parking lot, leaving the Seven Seas motel behind. He glances at it once in the review mirror and tries to put it out of his mind. He can still feel her eyes on him, long after the motel has faded out of sight.

  
* * *

  
 Sam tosses his pen down in disgust. It's a poor substitute for what he wants to do -namely, chucking his laptop out his 6th floor window- but it's a lot less counterproductive. He rubs his face with his hand and stares blearily down at the Best Western notepad on the table in front of him.

Sam had gone a little upscale in his choice of new digs, figuring that now was not the time to stick to the routine. And in its own way, the plastic, cookie-cutter aspects of a national hotel chain were far more anonymous than the 'colorful' dumps they usually stayed in. On the other hand,  one of the perks about motels like the Seven Seas was that people rarely asked questions and  the risk of some over-zealous maid stumbling across- oh, say- a cache of illegal weapons stored in a duffel bag was next to non-existent. To say nothing of the bloodstains. People tended to react badly to the bloodstains. Sam was managing, though. He'd left most of their stuff in the car, and he was hoping they could be out of there long before housekeeping started its rounds.

The free Wi-Fi was a nice bonus though. Too bad it wasn't doing him any good. Sam sighed and checked his phone again- perhaps the fifteenth time in the last hour. Still no response from Dean. He didn't really expect one, but he couldn't quite stop hoping. Especially as his research was turning up jack squat. He looked back down at his notes.

There were no signs, no omens. Not even a hint of anything supernatural, other than the vampires- the ones they'd already dealt with. Sam had found a few hints that a demon had been involved in the earlier mess he'd overlooked the first time around, but for all intents and purposes, it looked like she'd either high tailed it out of Miami or gone to ground in a big way.

And Dean... Dean had just disappeared. Sam had even tried tracking his phone, but it was either dead or off. Or beyond the reach of GPS satellites, but he was trying not to think about that.

Sam hears a flutter behind him and turns. He is too tired to be startled by Castiel's arrival this time.

“Cas, man. Tell me you've got some good news.”

“I don't.” The angel is starting to sound as tired as Sam feels, and it's an unsettling realization.

“Did you find anything?” Sam finds himself asking.

“No,” Castiel admits, sounding vexed by his own answer. “Dean is neither in Heaven nor in Hell, nor have any of the spirits and powers of the earth claimed him.”

Sam freezes. “You think he's dead?”

The angel stares back at him levelly. “I don't know,” he says, each word crisp and sharply punctuated.  "It's more important to find out who holds him."

“Okay, but that's good, right? If he's not up top, he's not dead-”

“No,” Castiel says, correcting him. “He is merely not in Heaven or Hell. That does not mean he isn't elsewhere.”

“Heaven, Hell, here- those are the only options, right? Where else could he be?” Sam says, then comes to a stop when he sees Castiel's face. “Great. So we're exactly where we started.”  Sam stares out the window. Dawn was creeping into the sky, stretching pink fingers into the grey of the pre-dawn light. “Well, there's one lead we haven't checked.” He sighs. “ Do you still have the badge Dean made you?”

Castiel slips a hand into a pocket and pulls out a leather ID-holder. Sam puts out a hand and takes it from him. He opens it, reads it, and hands it back.

“C'mon, Agent Moscone. It's time we went and made friendly with the locals.”


	8. Voyeur

**Act II - Voyeur**

  
It's Sunday morning, but the main office of Miami Metro is bustling. Saturday night, the city parties. Sunday morning, the cops muddle their way through the hangover. Sam parks the car and gets out. He checks his tie and looks over the rows of cars. He glances back at the car, waiting for Castiel, but the passenger seat is empty. Sam frowns, then turns back to the building. Castiel is standing in front of him. Sam nearly jumps, but manages to stop himself.

“Christ,” he says, “don't do that.” He looks Castiel over with a critical eye. In his suit and trench coat, the angel easily passes as an FBI agent, albeit maybe one who maybe'd watched one too many episodes of Columbo.

The angel ignores him, choosing instead to peer at the building as if he could see through it. Maybe he can. “You've done this before with Dean, though- you know the drill, right?" Sam asks.

“Yes. You lie.” Castiel says, then adds:  “I don't understand your need for subterfuge.”

Sam sighs. “Normal people don't react to the truth well.”

The angel gives him the look that means something has been lost in translation and says, “But they will tell us what we need to know.”

Sam shifts his weight. The morning is quickly heating up, and his suit is becoming uncomfortable. “Not if they laugh us out of the station. And that's the best-case scenario. We need to be subtle. At least to start. I don't think this is going to pan out, but in case it does- well, if they have Dean, they'll know who he is and arrest me on sight. Then we can screw subtle, and you can just get us the hell out of here.”

The angel still looks vaguely lost, like a non-native English speaker trying to follow slang. Sam runs a hand through his hair, and then suddenly gets it:  Subtlety is not something angels have much experience in. He thinks back to the disastrous séance, and of the other angels he's encountered- and even the Bible. Creatures whose customary greeting is “Fear Not,” don't bother with the niceties, and rarely have to deal with skeptics. The desire for subtlety must come across as a bizarre, pointless, fetish reserved for those with too much time on their hands.

Sam decides to try a different tack. “Look- well. It's complicated.” Sam gestures, trying to find the right words. “Dean and I... we don't want to attract attention. The normal world thinks we're dead, and if we draw too much attention to ourselves, we'll end up with our pictures plastered from one end of the country to the other. It'll become impossible for us to hide. And then we just won't have Heaven and Hell on our asses, but every law enforcement officer from the U.S. Marshals down to the meter-maids.  And probably the Mounties and Federales for good measure. The last time-” Sam stops and shakes his head. “I know how this one ends. They catch us- and then a lot of people die, caught in the crossfire."

It's not the whole answer, but it is an answer. Something akin to understanding rolls across the angel's face, though Sam is pretty sure Castiel still disagrees about the necessity.

“Fine....Agent Gardner,” Cas says. The delivery is a little stiff, but Sam is willing to take it. He grins. “C'mon, let's get this over with.”

The head into the building. The lobby is a little more magisterial-looking than Sam expects, but it is still very obviously a police station.  Sam walks up to the matronly-looking desk sergeant and flashes his fake badge. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Castiel do the same. “Agents Gardner and Moscone,” Sam says. “Is there someone here we can speak to about the Canary Factory case?”

“More of you?” the woman asks, sounding surprised. Her name plate reads “Sgt. Williams.”

“Is there a problem, Sergeant?” Sam asks, standing up a little straighter and telegraphing a lack of tolerance for smart-ass desk sergeants.

“Sorry, Agent,” says the woman. She doesn't sound all that apologetic. “Just surprised, that's all. Can you hold on  for a minute? I think Detective Morgan is in. Let me call up.” 

“That'll be fine,” Sam says. He puts on the glassy smile of an impatient professional and waits.

The sergeant messes with something on her desk, picks up her phone, and calls upstairs. After a minute, she turns back to Sam. “Okay, gentlemen. You're all set. It's the third floor. The elevator is behind you and to the right.”

Sam nods at her. “Thank you, Sergeant,” he says, then turns on his heel and marches off smartly in the direction of the elevator.  He pushes the call button, and the doors open immediately.

He gets in and turns to Castiel, who is still standing outside, looking at the elevator with a slightly aggrieved  expression. “Cas,” Sam hisses. Castiel steps inside and the doors slide close.

On the third floor, they're greeted by another police officer, who directs them to Detective Morgan's desk. The desk is covered in a messy profusion of case files. A half-empty coffee mug pins down a sheaf of notes. Sam gestures for Cas to take a seat in one of the two chairs placed in front of the desk, but he remains standing, unabashedly snooping.

“Can I help you?” a voice cuts across the room. The sentence sounds unfinished, as if it had originally ended with, _"crawl off and die,"_ but was subject to some judicious editing at the last minute. The speaker obviously isn't feeling friendly. 

Sam glances up to see a thin, wiry, and attractive woman glaring at him as she strides towards the desk. There's another stack of files in her hand. 

“Detective Morgan?” he asks. 

“Yeah, that's me,” she says. “Who are you?”  To call her blunt would be an understatement, but there is something refreshing about it.

Sam nods at Cas, who gets the message and reaches in his pocket. Sam slips out his own ID and flashes it at her. “Agents Gardner and Moscone,” he says. “We wanted to ask you a few questions about the Canary Factory case.”

She rolls her eyes. “You fuckers lose no time. Don't you ever take a weekend off? This is my goddamn case-”

Sam holds up a hand. “Detective, we're not interested in your case.”

“Yeah, what then?” Belligerent didn't even cover it. The woman had the personality of a pit-bull.

Sam dipped his head, and tried to look vaguely apologetic. “We've been tracking a- well, let's call him a vigilante- for the last few weeks. We have reason to believe he may have come here." Her hard stare doesn't so much as soften as it transitions from _back off_ to _tell me everything_. "He would have claimed to be an FBI agent," Sam continues, " and likely would have shown interest in the Canary Factory murders.”

Her attitude suddenly shifts. She gapes at him openly for a second, then says, “No fucking way! The guy? The hot fed LaGuerta was all over?” She chortles, “Seriously?”

Sam is startled by the change in demeanor, but presses on. “Possibly,” he says, non-committal.

He's relieved that the department hasn't started a manhunt for the infamous Winchesters, but on the other hand...well, it leaves him back at square one.  He reaches into a pocket and pulls out a photo of Dean. “This is the man we're looking for."

Detective Morgan takes the photo and looks it over. “Shit, it is him. She's gonna shit a brick.” She hands it back. “So what's his deal?”

“It's complicated,” Sam says. The detective scowls. “You said he's a vigilante. I've got six decapitated corpses. If you're fuckin' holding back on me-”

“No,” Sam says. “The man we're tracking – Dean Smith – was in Arkansas up until a couple of days ago. His MO is to show up and try to get access to cases that share...certain characteristics. Think Ms. Marple, but with more felony charges.”

“What the fuck do you mean, certain characteristics? Are there more cases out there like this?”

Sam shakes his head. “No. It's more the...strangeness of the cases,” he says, trying to pacify her. “It's not important. We're trying to catch him before he moves on. Did you speak to him?”

She shakes her head. “Nah. I just saw him- didn't talk to him at all. He was in Lt. LaGuerta's office for a while, but he was here to see my brother, I think. Or at least to see the forensics reports, some shit like that.”

Sam pulls out a notebook and writes down the lieutenant's name. “Your brother- he's in forensics?”

“Yeah.” She brushes her hair back from her face, trying to look casual, but not quite managing to hide her pride. “Dexter's our blood guy.”

“Same last name?” Sam asks.

“That better not be a pick up line, Agent,” she says, and the gleam in her eye belays the firmness of her tone. It takes a moment for his brain to catch up, because the woman changes direction like a jack-rabbit. But that's okay: this will work. He coughs to hide a laugh, and she grins at him. “Yeah. Same last name.” Sam makes a show of noting it down and then says, “So not married, huh?”

“Fuck no.” Her eyes sparkle. She leans forward across the desk, her body language playfully aggressive.

Castiel shifts in his chair. Sam glances back. The angel isn't even looking at him.  Castiel is watching a heavy-set man wearing a Hawaiian shirt shuffle through files. But Sam makes the most of it, schooling his face into an expression of chagrin and trying to look chastened. He coughs and says, “Are either the lieutenant or your brother available, detective?”

She shakes her head. “Dexter's at home. I could give him a call for you-”

Sam holds up a hand. “It's not necessary. We have other leads we need to follow- talking to him can wait until tomorrow. And it'll give me an excuse to come back,” he says, flashing his dimples at her.

She smiles back at him. “Alright." She sits back and holds her arms out. "You know where to find me."

"Thank you, detective." Sam makes a show of turning to leave, then hesitates. He turns back. “Hey. Um. I hate to ask this, but is there a computer I could borrow for like ten minutes?”

The detective wrinkles her brow in surprise. “What the hell for?”

“I just need to send an email to my director,” Sam says. “And the Wi-Fi at our hotel has been- well, unreliable.”

The detective rubs at her face. “Um. Well, I guess. Fuck, why not.” She points to a desk over on the other side of the room. “No one's assigned there right now, so I guess it'd be alright. The account name and password's on the sticky note on the monitor.” She pauses. “You won't have access to any of our goddamn databases,” she adds severely. “It's not set up for anything but the internet.”

Sam smiles and holds his hands out to emphasize his harmlessness. “Not a problem. I just need the Internet connection.”

She shrugs. “Go for it.”

Sam heads over to the computer. Castiel gets up from the chair and goes to follow him, pausing only long enough to look directly at the detective and say, “Your father was proud of you.” She blinks at him in consternation. “The fuck?”

Sam winces. “Um. It's just a thing he does. We'll be out of here in a minute.” He resumes walking towards the empty desk, but quickens his pace. Castiel follows.

When they're out of earshot, Sam hisses, “Dude, don't say things like that.”

“I just-”

“Yeah, just- don't. Okay? It's- not _subtle_.” Sam sits down at the computer and boots it up. A few minutes later, he scrawls something down into his notebook, then shuts the computer down.

He looks over at the detective. She's bent over her desk, absorbed in her notes. Sam gestures to Castiel, and they hurry out before she looks up. Sam pushes open the door to the stairs, opting not to wait for the elevator.

They head out in silence. Sam waits until they're in the car before he lets out the breath he wasn't even aware he'd been holding.

“Was there a point to that?” Castiel asks.

Sam holds up his notebook and gives it a little triumphant wave before tossing it down on the seat. “You bet your ass. One of the hookers at the motel told me the guy who broke into our room was one of the department's CSI guys,” Sam says. “And I know Dean said someone he talked to at the office gave him the creeps. I'm guessing it was the detective's brother- who's in forensics. That's good enough for me. We need to give this guy a visit and see what he knows.” He shrugs. “And hope to hell he knows something, because I am out of ideas."

Sam rolls down one of the windows and sticks the key in the ignition as Castiel glances down at the notebook. “We'll head back to the motel, get the directions and-”

Castiel's hand comes up and reaches out before Sam can protest.

And then Sam isn't sitting in the car anymore, but standing outside the manicured lawn of a suburban house.

Sam blinks. When his heart starts again, he says, “Goddamn it, Cas! Tell me before you do something like that. Jesus." Sam doesn't even want to think what Dean will say when he learns they left his car sitting with the keys in the ignition in a police station parking lot.

“Your way takes too long,” Castiel says.  And then he strides straight towards the house, his coat billowing out behind him.

Sam swears and races to catch up. _So much for subtle_ , he thinks.

**  
* * ***   
**End Act II**


	9. Imposter

**Act III - Imposter**

  
Sunday holds its own pleasures. Most people dread it, as the harbinger of the week to come, but I revel in it. There's more freedom in the end of something than the beginning. I'm certainly feeling refreshed and rejuvenated. My dark passenger lies satiated in the recesses of my mind, like a lion returned to its den: not asleep, but content. For now, at least.

Next to me, Rita shifts and leans back. We're sitting together on the couch, her head on my shoulder and her feet up on a pillow. She is flipping through a book of baby names. Every few minutes, she says one aloud, as if trying it on. Most are discarded with a frown, but occasionally she'll say, “What do you think of this one?”

I make the appropriate noises. It's a tedious exercise.

The pregnancy still feels abstract, as if she were just talking about adopting a kitten or a goldfish. I move my hand to her stomach and think, _This will be my child. That's my child, kicking against my hand_. It's an unsettling feeling. Maybe it will feel more real tomorrow.

The phone rings. I hear the clatter of running feet, and the phone is picked up before it can even get to the third ring. Rita lifts her head. I can hear Astor's voice, and so can Rita.

“Astor, who is it?” she calls.

“Ashley,” Astor shouts back. She goes back to her conversation. A minute later, she pops out of the kitchen, phone.

“Mo-om,” she says, elongating the word. “Ashley's going to the movies, can I go?”

“I don't know, Astor,” Rita starts, but I cut her off. “I can take her,” I say. My escape from baby-land is imminent.

“Well, okay,” Rita concedes.

“Yes!” Astor does a victory fist pump and dances back into the kitchen. Distantly, I hear here say, “she said yes!” After another minute, she pokes her head back out. “Can you drop me off at Ashley's mom's house?”

“Sure, no problem,” I say. I smile at her, but she's turned away, indifferent.

Rita catches my expression. “It's a tough age.”

“No kidding,” I say. I shift my weight, and Rita obligingly moves over and sits up, giving me room to stand. I stretch and fumble for the keys.

“Astor,” I call. “Let's go.”

Astor lets out a noise of disgust, but runs out to the front door. I follow her out, shutting the door behind me.

I drop Astor off at her friend's house and take the long way back. Sam Winchester will discover his brother missing soon, if he hasn't already. I'm hoping he will blame the disappearance on one of their many enemies. I was able to improvise with Dean- I doubt any such opportunity will present itself with Sam. It will require planning. But that's a problem for tomorrow, when I'll have access to the information I need. Today...today is to be savored.

I park the car in the driveway and get out. I head back into the house just in time to hear Rita say, “I think I hear him coming in now.” I walk into the kitchen and find Rita on the phone. She says, “here he is,” then hands the phone to me. “It's Debra.”

Deb. She's working today- maybe she's found something and needs me to come in. “Hey, little sister. What's up?”

“Dex! You'll never fucking guess.” Or... she's calling because she wants to share the latest gossip. I probably should have seen that one coming.

“Guess what?”

“You know the fed, the one LaGuerta was practically creaming herself over?”  
 _  
Dean._ “Uh, yeah. I could have lived without that image, though.”  
 I can almost see her grin over the phone. “He's not a fuckin' fed- can you believe it? He's like some kind of lame-shit vigilante. LaGuerta's going to have a cow.” Deb never got the memo about gloating.

“Wow. Really?”

“You better fucking believe it.”

 In the background, I hear the doorbell ring. Rita smiles at me and mouths, _I'll get it_. I can hear Cody stampeding towards the door. The neighborhood is full of kids.

I cradle the phone closer against my ear. “So who is he really?”

“One Dean Smith, supposedly. I dunno. I wasn't able to find anything on him, but that doesn't really mean much without more to go on.” Out in the hall, I hear Rita opening the door. She's talking to someone.

“How'd you find out?”

“It's crazy, Dex. Two agents showed up- and fuck, the FBI's making them pretty these days. They've been chasing after him for at least a couple weeks, I think.”

“So not connected to the Canary Factory, then.”

“Doesn't seem like it. Can't catch a goddamn break anywhere. Anyway, they want to talk to you and LaGuerta. They said they'd be back tomorrow.”

 I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Hey, so when did you hear all this?” I'd thought I would have more time. My run in with Sam was a mistake. _Shit._

Cody comes tromping through the kitchen and heads back out into the backyard.  “You're the first I've told. They left like two fucking minutes ago,” Deb says, "I wouldn't hold out on you, bro.”

Sometimes I'm really grateful Deb's my sister. This is one of those rare times. “Of course. What's family for, if not gloating to?”

“Shut up, motherfucker. Hey. Do me a favor?” 

Rita's laugh drifts into the kitchen. There's a nervous quality to it. It's followed by the low rumble of a baritone.

“Yeah, sure. What?”

“When the feebs talk to you tomorrow, find some reason for the tall one to stick around? I'd fuckin' owe ya one.”

I'm not even listening anymore. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Listen, Deb. I've got to go.” I hang up the phone, not even waiting for her response.

There's no way they could have made it here from the department in just a few minutes. Not even if Deb had been exaggerating how recently they'd been there. I can't shake the notion. I grab a knife from the stand and slide it into my sleeve. I hold the arm behind my back, and head out to the hallway.

Rita is standing uncomfortably, crowded up against a wall. When she sees me, relief washes over her face. “Dexter,” she says. “These two men, um. Wish to speak to you.”

Sam Winchester looks me in the eye and smiles. He remembers. His eyes are hard with fury, but his words are even. “Just a couple of questions.”

The mysterious Cas, standing behind him, cocks his head and stares at a point several inches behind and to the left of my shoulder. “I don't think that's anatomically possible.” He's not saying it to Sam, or Rita, or me. His eyes never leave the space behind me.  I have to fight the urge to turn around, to look and see. There's nothing there. I know there's nothing there, but my skin crawls anyway. “Rita,” I say. “This is just some work stuff.” I smile at her, not taking my eyes off Sam. She pulls me aside, and drops her voice to a whisper. “Dexter, are you sure?” She glances back nervously at the two men.

“Yeah, totally fine," I say, shrugging. "Don't worry about this. I got it. And anyway,  I'm pretty sure Cody's in the back, trying to turn the whole lawn into a mud pit.”

“That is worrying,” she says, smiling weakly. She has the most magnificent capacity for denial of human being I've ever met. “I better go stop him, then.” She walks out, and after a minute, I hear the door click shut.

No one moves. I stare at these men, these men who have walked out of the darkness and into my "normal' life, like some physical personification of my dark passenger, and wait. I want to see what they'll do. What they're here for.

“Nice family,” Sam says. And that's when I know: I'm going to finish him. He'll be mine.

“You killed my brother,” Sam says, leaning forward until his face is right in mine. I lunge forward, but he expected it. He meets me and spins my forward momentum into the wall. He pins me there and stops. I know the look in his eyes. He breathes heavily, but not from exertion. I stare back at him, defying him.

Cas, still staring at nothing, says, “Dean says, Stop. The family's still outside. You're drawing too much attention.” His delivery is utterly flat and distant.

Sam's isn't. “Oh, that is fucking hypocrisy, coming from him,” Sam spits.

“He says, Shut up, Sam.” Still in that almost monotone. Still fixedly staring at nothing. 

Sam glares in the direction of the same empty space. This is my chance. I slam my elbow into his solar plexus. He lets me go and falls back, wheezing. I pull the knife from my sleeve and swing around to face the mysterious Cas. My shoulder aches from the angle at which it was slammed against the wall, but not enough to slow me down. I slash at him, but the man- who'd done nothing but stare into space for the last few minutes- moves his arm up in a lightning-quick gesture and grabs my wrist. His gaze doesn't waver. He's not even looking at me. I try to pull free, but he's stronger than he has any right to be. He pushes my arm back and down, then turns his head to face me.

He brings up his other hand and moves it towards me. I try to duck and twist out of his hold, but it's useless. The hand is closer now. Somewhere, a million whispers grow from the edge of audibility to a roar. They sound urgent, but I can't make out the words. There's a flicker over his shoulder that resolves itself into the face of Dean Winchester. He's smirking at me.

Before I can react, before I can even look again, I feel the brush of a hand against my forehead and then-

Nothing.


	10. Truant

**Act III - Truant**

  
Dean looks at the prone body of his murderer and wishes he were physical enough to kick him. Dean has always prided himself on not being the kind of bastard who kicks a man when he's down, but right now, he'd like to make an exception. Leave it to a normal person to wander in and balls things up so spectacularly.

He glances over at his brother, whose expression is decidedly murderous. “Dude. Let it go. His family is _right outside_.” Sam can't hear him, of course, but Cas can and he duly relays the message.

“Dean- you realize you're dead, right?” Sam says. “Don't act like I'm being fucking unreasonable here. Goddamn it!” He swings out and punches the wall. It must hurt, but he doesn't show it. He shakes plaster out of his knuckles.

Dean rolls his eyes. “I did kind of get the memo, Sam. You know, what with being a fucking ghost and all.”

Castiel relays this. He doesn't bother copying inflections or tone, just passes on the message word for word. It lends the conversation an even more surreal quality.

“Fuck, Dean. What are we going to do?”

“Worry about it later. Let's get out of here before the wife comes back. Cas- can you bust me out of here? I've been unable to get more than thirty feet or so from this bozo.”

Dean has never yet caught an eye-roll from Cas, but for someone whose expressions tend to be limited to “angry staring,” “puzzled staring,” or the all-time favorite,  “general-purpose intense staring,”  he could certainly rock the non-eye-roll eye-roll. “Okay, stupid question. Tell Sam we're leaving.”

Castiel, apparently tired of the ventriloquist dummy act, doesn't.  Instead, he reaches out and-

\- they're in a motel room.  “Dude, you moved us to a _Best Western_?” Dean asks incredulously. He's about to rag on his brother about it some more -regardless of whether or not he can hear- when he notices that Sam has turned vaguely green and is swearing profusely. Sam stumbles over to the bed and sits down in an ungainly motion, like a puppet with its strings cut. He puts his head between his knees and takes shallow breaths.

“Ah. Never mind.” Flying Angel Air was a lot more pleasant dead. Under normal conditions, it was disorienting. But considering how much of the last week Sam had spent bonding with the toilet...yeah, there was probably a reason Cas was quickly climbing up Sam's shitlist.

While Sam courts death-by-smiting by heaping blasphemy after blasphemy on an Angel of the Lord, Dean turns to find Castiel frowning pensively at him.

“So what's next, kemosabe?”

“I don't understand that,” Castiel says, and it's not meant as a question. Anyone else would say, “ _Stop being an asshole,_ ” and Dean's pretty sure that's exactly what Cas means. But Dean can't seem to break himself of the habit, though undoubtedly one day he'll push it too far and Cas will just drop kick him into the next county.

Sam looks up.  “What's he saying?”

“What I mean,” Dean says, “Is where do we go from here? Tessa...” he trailed off. “She said a lot of things. But let's just say the out look wasn't good. Her suggestion was to go into the light and aim to be a needle in heaven's haystack.” He pauses. “Don't tell Sam any of this yet, okay? I'm just talking.”

“That would not work for very long. They would find you. Your soul is....distinct.”

Sam frowns at being conspicuously removed from the conversation, and Dean ignores him. “Yeah. I figured it couldn't be that easy. Shit. I'd have liked to believed it, you know? That we could just...remove ourselves from the board, and tell them all to take their apocalypse and go screw themselves.  There's no way out of this, is there? We can't even die like normal people. They'll just keep pulling us back.”

“Cas, man. I need to know. What's he saying?” Sam breaks out the earnest eyes.

 “Don't,” Dean says. Castiel glances from one to the other before answering Dean's question.

“The reapers-” Cas pauses, running something past a mental dictionary,   “They prefer things to be...neat.”

Dean makes a face. “She was lying, you mean.”

“Not necessarily.” Castiel shifts, and it's a telling gesture for someone usually so still. “But at most, your disappearance would only delay the final battle. It would not stop the war.”

Sam looks up sharply at that. “Don't cut me out of this, Dean,” he says.  “I don't know what the hell you're thinking, but stop. We need to find a way to fix this,” he continues, “Not a way to buy time.”

“It can't be fixed, Sam,” Dean says, forgetting for a second that Sam has no way of hearing him. “Not without walking right into the bastards' hands.”

Castiel relays the sentiment. Sam pounds a fist on the table. “So we'll double-cross them first. Don't you dare play martyr on me, you asshole.”

“There's a way. It's dangerous,” Cas says. “And is likely to fail.”

Sam nods sharply. “Fine. What is it?”

 At the same time, Dean shakes his head. “Cas, come on, man. This is stupid. There's no point in getting us all killed.” It's the wrong thing to say. The angel turns on him and stalks forward until he and Dean are nearly nose to nose. “You do not get to give up,” he growls. “I have sacrificed _everything_. I have lost _everything_. I will not allow it to have been for nothing.”

Dean glares right back and tries to shove the angel away and out of his personal space. Castiel remains unmovable as ever. Dean doesn't even get the pleasure of being able to pass right through him: in the half-world he moves in, the angel is the first tangible thing he has encountered.

Sam gets up. “Hey, Cas. Dean's just being a jackass.” The angel continues to glower at empty space for a moment longer, then turns away.

“You can't even hear me, jerk. How would you know?” Dean says. But he lets out a breath he doesn't need and didn't know he was holding.

“So what's the plan? What do we need to do?” Sam asks.

“We need Dean's body,” the angel says, looking down at the motel brochures. He picks one up and flips through it with unfocused fascination, the same way Dean has seen people staring into fridge when they're stressed and distracted, like the  answers to the universe might be hidden in the Best Western Pay-Per-View listings. “But it's still- hidden. The sigils must be undamaged.”

“Good luck with that one,” Dean says. “The guy did his best Lizzie Bordon impression and then dumped the pieces straight into the Gulf Stream.”

“Don't get me wrong, I agree.” Sam says, keeping his tone respectfully curious. He half shrugs, a gesture Dean has often seen him use to mean ' _no offense, but...'_. He continues, “But what's the plan for his body? I thought you were still...you know, low on mojo.”

Castiel sets the brochure back down. “My intention is not to raise him,” he says, frustrated for no reason that Dean can fathom. Perhaps it's the effort of communicating in words, rather than intense stares.  “His body is the only leverage we have.”

 Dean blinks at that, and then it sinks in. “Wait, you're going to use me as _bait_?” Dean demands, and Sam unknowingly echoes him: “Leverage? Are you kidding?”

“We need the help of one of my brothers, and they won't be inclined to give it.  What would you suggest? That we 'ask nicely'?” Sarcasm did not come naturally to the angel, but he was making a valiant effort. “Nothing else would guarantee a response as certain as that. No angel can allow permanent harm to come to Michael's vessel. They will come.”

“And what do we do when they say neener-neener and blast the living shit out of us? What's to stop them from just taking what they want?” Dean says. At the same time, Sam crosses his arms and says, “And then they'll double-cross us half a second after they get what they want.”

The angel falls silent for a minute, his eyes straying to the corner of the ceiling. “There are...signs and oaths,” he says at last,  “By which, when performed correctly, even angels may be bound. We will use them, and they will be unable to annul the terms.”

“I can't imagine that'll make you popular.”

The angel looks away. “No. To use them is to become anathema.”

There's something in the way that he says it that makes Dean think he is talking about more than not getting knocked off the Christmas card list, but before he can ask, Sam starts grilling Castiel on the how, when, and where. Dean lets it filter past him. He doesn't need the details- Castiel's grand plan is to stick Dean under a box propped up by a board tied to a rope and put up a big sign saying, “Archangel vessel, free! Claim inside.”

“That's only if we succeed, you mean,” Sam says. “Performed correctly- that's the key, isn't it? It's not just a couple lines of Latin and the right mix of kitchen spices.”

“Yes. It is...a complex ritual.” _And if that isn't an understatement,_ Dean thinks, _I'll scrap the Impala and buy a friggin' Pinto._ Dean has a feeling it will work about  just as well as any plan of Sylvester's to catch Tweetie bird.  
   
“Dude. Hello? Gulf Stream? Does that mean anything to anybody?” Dean asks.  “And...I'm just talking to myself here, aren't I? Cas, c'mon. It's the goddamn ocean. You can't possibly think-”

 Castiel turns his head to look at Dean. It shouldn't be unnerving, someone turning to look at the person they're speaking to, but the preternatural evenness of the movement serves as a reminder that Castiel is something uncanny. Not even robots move that smoothly, Dean thinks. “That I could find a single corpse?” he says, when Dean does not finish his sentence.

Dean shakes free of the thought. “Yes! I mean, no. That's crazy. We're talking thousands and thousands of square miles- or more. Shit, I don't know! It's the ocean. My corpse could be halfway to Timbuktu by now, for all you know.”

 “I doubt it,” Cas says, and the absolute certainty in his voice pisses Dean off.

“Oh yeah? And why's that?”

“Timbuktu is a landlocked city.” The delivery is completely even and without the slightest hint of reproach or judgment. Sam makes  a sound that suspiciously sounds like a laugh.

“Yeah, funny,” Dean says. “It doesn't change my point.  This is a stupid plan, and more than that, it's an impossible one, thank Christ.”

“I found you in Hell,” Castiel reminds him, as if he could forget. “The ocean does not compare.”

“Yeah, and look how that turned out. It only took you, what, 40 years?” Dean says. Unlike the angel, he's got no problem with sarcasm. “At that rate, everyone will be dead anyway and the apocalypse will be over.”

“This will be easier,” Castiel assures him. His gaze drifts towards the far corner of the ceiling. There's a spider's web there, some unlikely survivor of the depredations of the maids.

“Yeah? And why's that?” Dean can't help but to adopt a pose of sarcastic interest as he waits for the answer: resting his chin on a fist, the elbow of that arm supported in one cupped hand.

“Is he asking how you're going to find him?” Sam says suddenly. “Because I was kind of wondering about that, too.” He's been watching Castiel carefully, as if Castiel might secretly be giving away clues.

“I have you,” Castiel says to Dean. He goes thoughtful for a moment, then says. “Souls... resonate to the frequency of their physical bodies. It is the natural order of things- a connection that not even death can entirely sever.”

“You're going to use Dean as a dowsing rod?” Sam says, and Dean almost feels like cheering. The skepticism in Sam's voice reminds Dean why he puts up with him, even when he's nothing but a huge pain in the ass.

“More like a-” Castiel reaches for the word, the particulars of this conversation apparently taxing his mental Human-Angel lexicon to its limits.  “Compass,” he settles on at last, as if it were a poor substitute for the word he intended.

“Great.” Dean rubs a hand over his forehead, chasing away a phantom headache. “And what does this entail?”

 Castiel steps closer. “This,” he says, and he puts a hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean has a second to wish the angel would finally get the message about personal space and not least 'telling before showing' before his whole body- or spirit- or whatever suddenly feels like he's been hit by a bolt of lightning. Except instead of pain, it's more like...what was the word Cas had used? _Resonance._ Resonance. He feels like a tuning fork that's been struck, like every atom of his being is about to vibrate away from its neighbors. He's had no more time than to try and find some comparison, some way to process the sensation, when it stops.  There's no warning: it just ends, and it leaves Dean strangely bereft, like he's not only lost something, but forgotten about it, too.

“Holy shit.” The curse feels inadequate- too small, too human. But he expects they all would be. Shaken, he steps away from Castiel. “Was that it?” he blurts. Castiel is frowning. “I mean, is it over?”

“No,” Castiel says, and if Dean didn't know better, he'd say he sounded startled. His brow creases. He grabs Dean before Dean can back away, and his concentration is fierce. The strange feeling creeps up  on Dean, but feels like an echo of itself. It's over before he has time to do more than to brace himself.

“Cas, what the hell?” Dean says.

“It's gone,” Cas says, and it's the first time Dean has seen him truly flabbergasted. He's blinking like a man watching the sun rise in the west, and seeing pigs alight on power lines.

“Gone? What do you mean, gone?” Dean demands.

“Cas-” Sam starts, “What's going on?”

“It's not there,” Cas repeats, still sounding like he doesn't quite believe it.

“Could someone else have gotten it? Could it be...warded or something?” Sam asks, looking as freaked out as Dean feels. It's not the news: it's how Cas is reacting to it.

 Castiel abruptly turns to face Sam. “No,” he says, and the word almost sounds like a curse, harsh and bitter. “Even hidden, it would be sensed. Even destroyed, there would be an echo. But there is _nothing_. It's just-”

“Gone,” Sam finishes for him.

“This shouldn't be,” Castiel says, and his tone falls in some strange land between befuddlement and outrage. “I don't understand it.”

“You wouldn't,” someone says, snorting in derision, but Castiel doesn't react and doesn't seem to hear it. And neither does Sam. Dean turns around, feeling puzzled. He doesn't see anyone.

“Unless...” Cas begins, but Dean is only distantly paying attention. “Tessa?” he tries. It's a shot in the dark- and it's one that misses. “Guess again,” says the voice, this time right into his ear. The tone is maddeningly familiar, even if the voice isn't.

In the background, he can hear Sam ask, “Unless what?”

That smug, self-satisfied tone , Dean thinks. He's heard it before.  Dean whirls around again, trying to figure out where in the hell it's coming from. He doesn't find it: it's gone. The room has gone dead quiet. That's the clue-

Correction: He's gone. The motel room has vanished, to be replaced with a room he recognizes but wishes he didn't. It's the room where he'd woken up tied to the table. It's the room where he died.

Except it's not- not exactly. His killer had destroyed all the evidence, but here it is again, looking just as it had in those moments when he'd first opened his eyes. A construct, then. A copy.  He paces around the table, looking for some sign as to what the hell he's doing here- though he'd settling for knowing the 'how' or the 'who'.

Nothing seems out of place. The table is the most obvious difference, but Dean is willing to concede that not being tied to it is an improvement he's not going to question. Dexter's tools are still lined up in the corner. There's still clear plastic covering everything and making Dean feel vaguely claustrophobic. The photos-

The photos. There's more of them, for one thing. They line the walls. Dean would feel bad for not noticing sooner, but the truth is he hadn't paid much attention to them the first time around. He'd had other things on his mind, like the maniac who'd attacked him, drugged him, and kidnapped him. Dean steps closer to get a better look at the one nearest to him.

“Son of a bitch.”  He runs along the wall, looking at the rest. They're all the same: they're all of him dead, the cause of death artfully obvious in each.  Electrocuted. Shot. Burned. Impaled. Squashed. Mauled. Strangled. Stabbed. Poisoned. Run over. Defenestrated. Choked. Suffocated. Stampeded. Decapitated. Gutted. Hanged. Drowned. Buried alive. In one, he'd even succumbed to the goddamn plague.

He didn't remember them, but he recognized them all the same.

“You know, the last was a personal favorite of mine,” says the voice, casually. “ If you could have seen his face-”

Dean turns around, slowly this time. “You,” he growls, and launches himself at the man standing behind him.  Dean picks him up by the lapels and shoves him against one plastic-covered wall. “You did this? What is this, a fucking joke to you?”

“Ahah-ahah-ahah,” says the man, waggling a finger at Dean in a schoolmarm-ish fashion. The man casually grabs one of Dean's fists and removes it from his jacket, then uses his grip on it to push Dean away and down without any apparent effort. He lets go, then straightens his jacket. “Dean-Dean-D-D-Dean,” he says, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “I thought we were past this.”

Dean picks himself up off the floor. “Oh, yeah? And why would you think that?”

“Well, for starters, I think you would have learned by now that you've got a -zero- chance of being able to hurt me. Oh. And that I could squash you like a bug-” he pinches his finger and thumb together to illustrate- “if I wanted to.”

“Newsflash, pal. You missed your chance. I'm dead, in case you haven't noticed. This whole threatening-me thing? It's kind of pointless.”

The archangel rolls his eyes. “Well, duuuh. Seriously, did you miss the décor?” He gestures with the index fingers of both hands at the kill room. “Besides, when has death ever stopped me from having my fun? You should know that.”

Dean slides a hand across his face. “Fine, whatever. Can we at least just get this over with, please?”

“Get what over?” The archangel holds his hands out and puts on a face of innocent confusion, but it soon slides into a smirk. “C'mon, Dean. Don't be such a killjoy.”

“I'm not interested in your games, Gabriel. Lecture me or torture me or whatever it is you think you have to do, and let me get on with my sucktastic afterlife.”

“Moi? Torture? Lecture? I'm hurt, really.”

Dean finds himself unable to refrain from taking the bait. “Oh yeah? That's all you seem to do! What the hell do you call the goddamn TVland? Or how about that-” he jerks a thumb at the photographs, “you know, the time you spent god-knows how many Tuesdays forcing my brother to watch me die over and over again? What the hell else am I supposed to call it?”

Gabriel shrugs. “Individually tailored object lessons.”

“And how have those been working out for you? I mean, you sure as hell didn't convince Sam of shit- except of your assholery- and I tell you what, buddy, I am not signing up to be a fuckin' prom dress.”

The archangel makes a little moue of distaste. “Really, prom dress? That's what you're calling it?”

Dean crosses his arms. “What? What's wrong with it?”

“Um, prom dress? Yeah, let's not even go there.”

Dean presses a knuckle into his forehead. “Why the hell am I even getting into this with you? And answer the damn question.”

Gabriel gives a little shrug. “No skin of my nose. And anyway. So what if I'm not batting a thousand there? It's not my fault I've got blockheads to work with.”

“Are you going to explain what the hell I'm doing here, or are you just going to talk me to...undeath?”

“Sheesh, touchy.”

“Yeah, it's been that kind of week. And anyway, while I'm on that subject, what is up with the whole theme you've got going here? I mean: I'm dead. He already killed me. There's not much of an 'object lesson' in that.”

Gabriel makes a face that manages to avoid being a pout by the barest margin. “If you must know, it wasn't originally meant for you, okay?”

Dean actually feels kind of affronted. “What, you're recycling now?”

“Hey, it was apt, okay?” Gabriel flicks a phantom speck of dust off his coat.

“Apt- wait. You're not targeting the guy, are you?” Dean looks around the room again in frank disbelief.

“Lucky for you,” the archangel says, in way of defense. He snaps. “I was able to rescue a few things from the briny deep.” In the corner, a neatly stacked pyramid of small, garbage-wrapped packages appears.

“Great, just what I needed. And anyway, what the hell are you doing going after that guy- Dexter?”

The archangel gives him a singularly sardonic look. “It's right up my alley. He's a self-important dick. Who murders people, I might add, just in case you missed that part.”

“ _You_ murder people.”

“I'm an angel. It's called smiting- it doesn't count. They all deserved it.”

“That's what he says,” Dean feels compelled to point out. He'd say death has left him refreshingly free of self-preservation, but he's never really been able to resist needling things he really shouldn't. Death hasn't changed that much.

The angel makes a face that Dean interprets as meaning he concedes the point. “Yeah, maybe. He's only human, though. He thinks,  I can _know._   Besides, you should hear his internal monologue. You'd probably shoot him just to make him shut up. He's more than earned a little quality time with me.”

“Speaking of that- you just happened to be hanging out in Miami, watching that guy? I mean, shouldn't you be a little busy to be messing with serial killers?”

“You mean the whole apocalypse you and your brother started? I'm out of it- I told you that.  I'm just trying to enjoy myself before the fireworks start. But you know, if you want to get on that subject, I might ask you the same question. Vampires, Dean, really? And it was such an obvious trap, too.”

“Oh, suck it. It's the job-" Dean says, and then something about what the angel just said strikes him as wrong. "Wait. How the hell do you know about the vampires?” He gives Gabriel a hard, incredulous look. "What are you, stalking us now?"

"Who me? Don't flatter yourself, Dean-o." Gabriel shrugs and waves one hand in a vague gesture. “Word gets around. You guys aren't exactly _subtle_ ," he says, arching an eyebrow at Dean. "Hey- it's not important. But you were right about one thing.” He makes a little shooting gesture with his thumb and forefinger. “I am a little busy for this. You know how it is. Orgies to plan, parties to crash. So I'm going to do you a favor, and you'll do me a little one. Quid pro quo. We'll call it even from the last time.” That's one hell of a deflection, Dean thinks, but he lets it go.

“What favor?” Dean eyes the archangel suspiciously and tries to brace himself.

Gabriel smiles. “I am going to fix you.” He points a finger directly at Dean. “You're little death problem? Is going to go away. And in return...”

“What?”

“Let's just say it involves a certain serial killer, and I'm sure you'll figure it out. You've got style.”

Dean stares, then walks closer, looking the angel directly in the eye. “Why are you really helping me?”

The archangel shrugs. “It's just as I said. But...” he pauses, then leans down conspiratorially. “Can you keep a secret?”

Dean makes a face, then shrugs. “Yeah, I guess.”

The angel leans closer. “Too bad.” Then he stands back up.

“What- that's it?”

“Yup. What, you thought we were going to have a heart-to-heart? Please. Give me a hand here, and then I don't want to see you again until you're ready to get it all over with.” He holds a hand up, his fingers posed to snap. “Oh, and Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Get your brother out of Miami before Lucifer shows up. I _like_ this city.”  The archangel snaps his fingers theatrically.

Dean sits up in the backseat of the Impala. “Jesus,” he grouses. “He just had to get the last word in.” He clambers out of the car. The leather is scorching hot from sitting in the sun. Once out of the car, Dean stretches, then pats himself down. He's wearing the clothes he was wearing before- well, just before.

“Christ, what a day.” He fumbles in a pocket and finds his cell phone. He pulls up the contact list and calls Sam. As the phone rings, he opens the front door and slides in the car.

Sam picks up the phone. “Dean!”

“Sam- Wait. Why the hell did you leave the Impala in a police parking lot with the goddamn keys in the ignition?”

“Uh- is that really important right now?”

Dean glowers at the steering column. “Uh, yeah. But I guess I can kick your ass about it later.”

“So...you're alive?” Sam sounds cautiously optimistic. It's ridiculous how much of a non-event this has become.

“Yeah.”

“How? What the hell happened? You disappeared-” Okay, so not a non-event, Dean silently amends.

“I'll come by the motel. It's a long story and I'll tell it on the way out of town. But there's something I gotta do first.”

*** * ***

End Act III  



	11. Epilogue

Epilogue

I wake up lying on the floor of the front hallway. My mouth feels like it's been stuffed with cotton. My shoulder aches.  It takes me a minute to remember how I got here. I'm not sure how long I was out- it's hard to tell with drugs.  It doesn't feel like long, but I'm not sure if that means minutes or hours. Those men- Sam and the Winchesters' accomplice-

Nothing about them makes sense. They had me down, but they left.

“Dexter!” It's Rita. In an instant, she kneels down besides me. I push the Winchesters to the back of my mind for the moment. “What happened? Are you okay?” Minutes, then. Even Rita would have trouble missing the fact that I was lying unconscious on the floor.  “Uh, yeah.” I hold a hand to my head and rub at my temple. I smile at her. “Just slipped. Nothing bruised but my pride.”

“Those two men-” she starts. It's clear she's not sure where she's going with it, because she stops and lets the words just hang in the air

I get to my feet. “They were FBI agents. They wanted to know about someone who came into my office a couple days ago.” I shrug. “They couldn't wait until Monday.”

“Are they coming back?”

“No.” I'll make sure of it.

“Good.”  Such firmness was rare in the old Rita. Today, that might be a problem. They'll be back, I know they will. I need to get her out of the house before they do. Otherwise, it might get...messy. She'd hate it if I got bloodstains in the grout.

I lend her my hand and help her up. “Where's Cody?”

“Winding my garden hose back up,” she says with rueful fondness. “You were right about the mud pit.”

“Are you kidding? He's been talking about it for days.”

She shrugs. “Must have been a boys-only secret. Mom didn't get to hear about that one.”

“Ah, but I told you. You've got an in.” What will they do? They didn't kill me when they had the chance. They left. Was it too public? Too many witnesses? Or do they want to make it special, like I did with Dean? I need answers. I need some time to figure out my next move.

“I guess I do.” Rita says, smiling up at me.

“Hey, I've got an idea,” I say.

“Oh yeah, and what's that?” She leans in against my shoulder.

I inject some cheer into my voice. “I was thinking- why don't we round up Cody and go to the movies ourselves? Astor's movie won't start for another hour or so. We'd probably all get out around the same time. What do you think?” Say yes, Rita.

She obliges. “Let's do it,” she says, “We won't get many opportunities once the baby's born. Not for awhile. It'll be good to get out.”

She's right. It will. I'll fake a call and leave them in the theater, where they'll be safe. At least for a while.  “Let's make it a double feature, then. What do you say?” 

Rita turns her head away, playing coy. She peeks at me through her eyelashes. “The last time I went to a double feature, I was 16 and  it was just an excuse to make out with my boyfriend.”

“Huh. Will he be there today?” She smacks me playfully across the shoulder, then walks down the hall.

“Cody!” she calls. “Go get dressed. We're going to the movies.”

Cody shouts something back. It's brief and joyful. I slip back out to the front door and go outside.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for- trained assassins lurking in the hedges?

“This is the problem with improvisation,” Harry says. He stands next to me and loosens his tie. “You've put your family in danger, Dexter.”

“I can handle it,” I say, scanning the street. “I just need some time-”

“You don't have it.”

I look away from the street long enough to glance at him.  “You don't know that.”

He shrugs. “And what will you do, son, when your family comes home, but you haven't yet taken care of the problem?”

“It's not going to be an issue,” I tell him. “I'll deal with it.” It sounds less than convincing, even to my own ears.

He shakes his head, disappointed. “They can't stay at the movies forever.”

I close my eyes. “I'll think of something.” I'll have to.

“Some things, Dexter, should be left in the dark.”

That's when I hear it: a dark rumble, echoing up the street. This doesn't make sense. They just left- they can't be returning now. I open my eyes. The black behemoth rolls by, slowly enough that I get a good view of the sole occupant. I'm dreaming- but I don't dream. Not like this.

The driver waves. Dean.

There's a tingle running down my spine. I feel like I've just grabbed hold of a live wire- numb for now, but when I let go...

And just like that, the car is gone. He disappears around the corner.

Rita comes up from behind me. “Dexter, who was that?”

I can't think. Everything- all my plans, all my intentions- die away. “What?”

“The man in the car. He was waving.” She sounds odd, but it's probably me.  Not a dream- not a dream? How can the dead come back? He should be at the bottom of the sea. I should know, after all. I made sure of it.

“I thought you didn't know anyone here,” she adds. “I don't,” I say. I should lie, but at this minute, I can't think of a single one.

“Oh. Um. Well, are we going?” She brushes a strand of hair out of her eye. I don't answer her. “Dexter?”

“Wash your hands of it, Dexter,” Harry says. 

“Yes,” I say at last. “Let's go.”

  


 **The End.**

  


  
 **Check out the awesome art created for this story by attempt_unique[here](http://attempt-unique.livejournal.com/47844.html). She also put together a soundtrack, and I listened to it about a billion times while writing and brainstorming for this story.  
**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a time stamp or two (from Dean's POV) posted soon-ish.


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